‘Music Sung Blue’ assessment: Jackman and Hudson sweetly croon

You received’t see a film with higher music and worse dialogue this vacation season than the bizarrely charming “Music Sung Blue,” a biopic a couple of husband-and-wife Neil Diamond cowl band who had been a fleeting sensation in Nineties Milwaukee.

If that plot synopsis isn’t a hook, the soundtrack is full of them, as stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson belt over a dozen Diamond hits together with “Ceaselessly in Blue Denims,” “I Am…I Stated,” and “Holly Holy.” In fact the couple they’re taking part in, Mike and Claire Sardina, a.ok.a. Lightning & Thunder, additionally do “Candy Caroline,” though they disagree over the place it belongs within the set listing. Mike prefers final, permitting them to showcase his idol’s vary beforehand. Claire insists it come first after an incident when withholding it triggers a biker brawl.

Written and directed by Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Move”), the film is itself a canopy of Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary on the Sardinas, additionally titled “Music Sung Blue.” The unique is a unusual little indie that reveals reality to be weirder than fiction. What occurs to Mike and Claire is so outlandish that you simply’d roll your eyes if Brewer additionally included the info that their real-life wedding ceremony climaxed with a live performance for a thousand individuals on the Wisconsin State Honest and that the groomsmen wore tuxedo T-shirts.

Each movies are love tales, even when the brand new model compresses Mike and Claire’s decade and a half marriage into two years. He’s a divorced auto mechanic and recovering alcoholic with a surly-but-sweet distant daughter named Angela (King Princess) and a little bit of native renown. She’s a single mother to son Dayna (Hudson Hensley) and her personal daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson), when Mike struts into her life sporting lightning bolts on his jacket and tooth. His supervisor, Dave (Fisher Stevens), can be his dentist.

It is a script that reveals and tells. If Mike jokes that Dave deserves a free oil change for lacking out on a $10 fee, then you definately higher imagine the film will reduce to him below the automobile doing the job. Each character blurts out precisely what they need with the gusto of belting out ba-ba-baaaah at a sure Neil Diamond refrain.

“I gotta be Neil however I gotta be me too,” Mike says urgently. A pair scenes later, Hudson’s Claire turns to Rachel and pleads, “I simply need to sing and really feel blissful and be beloved!” Likewise, as quickly as their youngsters are thrust collectively on a clumsy playdate, the ladies get stoned, trauma-bonding about their unstable dad and mom, a cute and corny second that ensures the viewers is aware of the dangers if Lightning & Thunder are compelled to hold up their spangles.

The twosome are backed by a tour booker, Tom (Jim Belushi), who desires of getting them a residency in Vegas, and a motley crew of fellow mimics together with a Buddy Holly (Michael Imperioli) and a James Brown (Mustafa Shakir). Shyaporn Theerakulstit, Chacha Tahng and Faye Tamasa have some good moments as Thai restaurateurs who welcome the Sardinas’ household into their very own. Typically although, you end up watching Anderson because the anxious Rachel who appears most in tune with actuality. Can her mother and stepdad’s fantasies of fame really pay their lease?

There’s a spoiler within the trailer that I like to recommend avoiding in case you can. The argument for it will need to have been that nobody desires to see a musical about two Midwesterners in rhinestones until one thing dangerous occurs to them. Most rock biopics have an identical rise-and-fall-and-rise arc; it’s a cliché that works, like plugging “Candy Caroline” right into a bar’s jukebox. However what offers “Music Sung Blue” a wonky form of depth is that there’s solely so excessive Mike and Claire can rise. When the real-life couple was fired from a gradual reserving, the membership proprietor justified his actions by saying, “Particularly being in Neil Diamond impersonation, your limits are Neil Diamond.”

Followers will counter that the songwriter’s items are so ceaseless that youthful generations won’t even join every hit together with his title. Bopping alongside to the film looks like being at a pub trivia evening the place the reply is at all times Neil Diamond: That’s proper, he additionally wrote The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.” Begrudgingly, you half-buy into one of many script’s extra ludicrous set-ups, that Lightning & Thunder will play their largest present on the evening Diamond is headlining at one other venue on the town. The larger metro inhabitants of Milwaukee is simply shy of 1 and half million individuals. Positive, why not.

Grinding plot gears apart, the duo’s precise largest gig is fairly superior: In 1995, Eddie Vedder invited Lightning & Thunder to open for Pearl Jam. (“What’s a Pearl Jam?” Mike asks.) The quirky mash-up of sequins and flannel will get reenacted right here, however this could be a richer film if it explored why a Seattle grunge band rocketing towards mega-stardom would whisk this act alongside for the journey. Appreciation for Diamond’s lyrical craft? Respect for the Sardinas’ real skills? Or simply kitsch?

That Lightning & Thunder peaked when Gen Xers had been ascendant makes you yearn for Brewer to grapple with how a lot of their fan base was ironic. That query, together with Diamond’s ear worms, received’t cease wriggling in my mind. The closest reply I’ve discovered is in a “Simpsons” episode from across the identical time the place Homer takes the stage at a cartoon model of Lollapalooza. (“He’s cool,” a pierced punk says with a snort. A buddy asks if he’s being sarcastic, and the child collapses like a scorching air balloon: “I don’t even know anymore.”)

“Music Sung Blue” couldn’t be much less cool. However the Sardinas had been utterly honest and Jackman and Hudson honor their innocence by taking part in them straight. (Brewer, nonetheless, can’t resist a pratfall the place Mike journeys singing “Cracklin’ Rosie” in his skivvies.) Jackman appears to be like and sounds a lot like Diamond that the live performance scenes really feel like top-fleet karaoke, and Hudson greater than holds her personal, whilst her Claire is tasked to stare at her husband with starry eyes that sparkle as a lot as her silver make-up.

Hudson encourages the viewers to make use of Claire’s cussed buoyancy and perky accent as a life raft when Lightning & Thunder are deluged by extraordinarily dangerous luck. However the beat Hudson will get precisely proper is available in a scene the place you’re sure this klutzy melodrama goes to power her to sob. As an alternative, she refuses. She smiles, and that’s the element that breaks your coronary heart.

So I cried for her. Then I groaned some extra and whereas I didn’t want an encore, I left the theater buzzing.