PLOT: Mike (Hugh Jackman) and Claire (Kate Hudson) are two lonely, middle-aged part-time musicians who meet whereas working as impersonators. The 2 resolve to turn out to be a crew referred to as Lightning and Thunder, redesigning their act to turn out to be the final word Neil Diamond tribute, creating an enormous cult following and a relationship on the street. Nevertheless, tragedy strikes, threatening to derail them simply as their goals begin to come true.
REVIEW: Music Sung Blue is such a loopy story that you recognize it needs to be true—who may ever dream it up? There actually was a Lightning and Thunder, and so they have been fairly rattling good, with a documentary chronicling their careers launched a couple of years in the past (you’ll be able to watch it on YouTube). Whereas the film takes a number of Hollywood liberties, notably within the overly artificial-feeling climax, a number of the crazier bits taken from their lives—corresponding to the truth that they have been as soon as in style sufficient to open for Eddie Vedder, who performed with them onstage—are legit. And Craig Brewer, working with a well-cast Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson because the eponymous Lightning and Thunder, pays a stunning tribute to this working-class act, who by no means let the shadow of tragedy that adopted them take them away from doing what they cherished.
In fact, your like or dislike of Music Sung Blue possible depends upon your love of Neil Diamond, with the film serving as a type of jukebox musical constructed round his greatest hits. I occur to be a fan, so I fell fairly onerous for Music Sung Blue, though it didn’t harm that I’ve one thing of a style for melodrama and have all the time been a sucker for a tearjerker.
Each Jackman and Hudson are at their greatest in roles that match them like considered one of Diamond’s sequinned jumpsuits. Jackman has made no secret of his choice for musical roles, and this will need to have been a dream for him—having the ability to juggle drama and sing a bunch of tunes because the tortured-but-upbeat Mike, aka Lightning. A Vietnam vet and a recovering alcoholic, he clings to the Diamond songs that acquired him via the worst instances, however solely finds a means ahead when he meets Hudson’s Claire, aka Thunder, who encourages him to begin a band she ultimately sings backup in. Along with her having two children and him having one, they begin a somewhat harmonious blended household earlier than tragedy begins to strike—time and again—with the pair barely getting a break from the horrible luck that follows them.
What makes Music Sung Blue so shifting is that Brewer, who beforehand directed two different nice films about misfits attempting to make artwork—Hustle & Movement and Dolemite Is My Identify—by no means makes it downbeat. Slightly, he invitations us to seek out pleasure within the small victories received by Mike and Claire, the largest of which is the love they discover for one another. The film shares of their pleasure when the act works, or when the blended household matches so properly collectively, with Mike and Claire’s daughters (performed by singer King Princess and Hudson Hensley) instantly changing into confidants and associates. Mike and Claire, whereas definitely outsiders to some extent, are introduced as heat individuals who make associates in every single place they go: Michael Imperioli as a Buddy Holly impersonator who joins the band; Mustafa Shakir as Intercourse Machine, a James Brown impersonator; James Belushi as their supervisor; Fisher Stevens as Mike’s greatest good friend and dentist; and so forth. As in his different films, Brewer exhibits how folks like this could put collectively large surrogate households that all the time have one another’s backs—even when destiny always threatens to take as a lot away from them as it might, typically with out mercy.
In fact, early evaluations of Music Sung Blue are combined, with many calling it overly sentimental. We dwell in a cynical time, and this isn’t a film for cynics. Whereas I do assume Brewer will get carried away within the climax, the place he goes for an nearly operatic end, for a lot of the working time Music Sung Blue is each an efficient tearjerker and a toe-tapping musical. If you wish to see a film that simply needs to place a smile in your face.
