Song Sung Blue

Grade: C+

Song Sung Blue is an excellent idea for a perfectly entertaining Broadway jukebox musical, done as a movie instead – but in the process, nobody in the cast was told that it will be in the theater, rather than the theatre. Everyone plays it with big, broad strokes, like they’re trying to make sure their expressions “read” all the way up to the top row of the second balcony. Jim Belushi is the worst offender. His hyperactive mugging would be a show-stealer on the live stage. In a movie, though, it’s annoying as hell.

The music performances almost save it. Watching everybody, especially Kate Hudson, is like getting a master class on how to present and perform a song. The next time I play at my church might have some extra fire to it, due to seeing Song Sung Blue. It begins with us meeting Hugh Jackman as Mike. He has a guitar, and is monologuing about himself musically and personally. The extreme closeups are a tipoff that there’s something they don’t want us to see just yet. When it finally cuts to a wider shot, it’s revealed to be an AA meeting, and he’s doing a “share.” This is Mike’s 20th sober birthday speech.

The next scene is backstage at a state fair, where Mike is once again playing Don Ho – one of many tribute artists present here. This sequence is one big game of Guess Who This Person’s Supposed to Be. It’s there that Mike meets Patsy Cline impersonator Claire (Hudson). It doesn’t seem to take long for them to get married and blend their families. Mike has long been wanting to abandon the Don Ho gig, and so they get an idea to rebrand as a Neil Diamond tribute duo, calling themselves Lightning and Thunder.

The majority of the songs play all the way through. They have energy and life, and I loved them. What we hear appears to match what everyone’s fingers are doing on the keys and the fretboards. Meanwhile, the music biopic machinery creaks along in the book scenes. Claire gets injured, and has to adjust to a new normal. Mike has a recurring health issue that he’s having more and more trouble keeping under wraps. Claire’s mother sporadically materializes, mainly to grimace, shake her head, and tell them to turn down that music – so that when she turns up at the end to smile, wish them a good show, and take her seat near the front, we will feel something. I found it all very hollow when the story is storying.

The ending has Mike’s stepson in the garage, watching – on a small cheap TV – a solo acoustic performance of Mike’s that he filmed. The sound quality is already unnaturally amazing, even before the mystery strings and other instruments kick in. This would have held more weight on a Broadway stage, and they could have incorporated some ideas that would definitely have been too corny for a film. The best reason to see Song Sung Blue in the theater is to witness Jackman, Hudson, and crew tearing it up on all those great songs, with that cinema sound. Otherwise, I didn’t get much out of it.

Grade: C+