Song Sung Blue (2025) Movie Review: Tired Triumphs Buoyed By Incredibly Infectious Enthusiasm

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Craig Brewer’s filmography has been so firmly tied to vibrant, regionally specific expressions of African-American entertainment culture—from the Hollywood fringes of blaxploitation cinema in the 1970s to the peak years of crunk in mid-2000s Memphis—that most people are shocked to learn that the man behind “Dolemite Is My Name” and “Hustle & Flow” is, in fact, some white guy from Virginia. Those same flabbergasted viewers are unlikely to encounter the same shock in the face of “Song Sung Blue,” in which Brewer goes full-throttle to craft perhaps the whitest musical biopic this side of the American Midwest (…or stand-in shooting locations in New Jersey, as it were).

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Just as innately tied to the desire for a successful underdog performance as any of Brewer’s more hardened features, “Song Sung Blue” shines with the sort of artificial glitz that revels in its own rickety razzle-dazzle as a key component of its charm. Nobody involved in Lightning and Thunder: A Neil Diamond Experience thought they were changing the world, nor does anyone in the film chronicling their story seem to think as much of their own endeavour; it all comes in service of the rush felt in front of a vibing crowd, and it lives and dies by how much vigour it can channel out of that blinding spotlight.

From the very first moment Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) and Claire Stingl (Kate Hudson) lock eyes in the midst of a hokey cover act concert at the local carnival grounds of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it’s clear enough that they share that drive to entertain, and feel the spark that sets that fervour into overdrive when bolstered by each other’s shared enthusiasm. Both middle-aged single parents with their own battles to fight, Mike and Claire find solace in their shared passion for singing, and that passion quickly blooms into a project of their own, based off of Mike’s existing (and flailing) “Lightning” musical persona.

Song Sung Blue (2025) Movie — A still from Song Sung Blue (2025)

Harbouring no delusions about the creative ability to produce their own music (or any show-stopping talent for singing, either), Lightning and Thunder instead focus squarely on the tunes of Neil Diamond, and after scraping together the resources needed to book a few small gigs—a rowdy biker bar here, a hotel-casino there—it doesn’t take long for the bolt to strike hard and start a wildfire that spreads its way all across Milwaukee.

Also Read: The 10 Best Movie Musicals in Cinema

It’s this very passion that propels “Song Sung Blue” past its more overt biopic clichés, as Jackman and Hudson foster a combined bubbly engagement that will have you thinking they’re ready to headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show. That same blind intensity all but spells out how grossly underprepared they’d be for such a massive gig, but Brewer’s co-leads are immeasurably joyous to watch onscreen together; just a sway of Hudson’s hips behind her janky keyboard and a borderline-geriatric pelvic thrust from a centre-stage Jackman is all it takes to show how Lightning and Thunder very much live up to their moniker—namely, by being loud and flashy, potentially disastrous but ultimately rather beautiful.

Naturally, lightning and thunder must, in most cases, signal a hard rainfall, at which point Brewer must grapple with the lows that have to crash through the door to make those soaring high notes resonate at all by comparison. It’s here where “Song Sung Blue” dives into more rote dramatic territory, as you can detect the exact moment where everything begins to go to shit for these characters and all joy is systematically sapped from the experience, where the impacts of being a side-gig musician are forced to come to the fore when the reality of financial instability grabs the steering wheel.

It’s arguably a necessary evil to make the ebb and flow of the film’s drama move with any kind of triumph, but Brewer’s grasp of sincere musical joy finds him ill-equipped to handle the more sombre lowpoints of this dramatic arc. (Hudson especially does everything in her power to sell this shift with as much nuance as such a character could afford while still remaining true to her innate buoyancy.) For every instance in which the writer-director finds himself willing to hold back on some potentially trite narrative developments—Mike’s alcoholism is ever-lurking, but never veers into tropey spiralling—“Song Sung Blue” unfortunately finds him succumbing to others, these ones almost deafening enough in their pitch to derail the whole experience; the very end of the film, sadly, meets this fate.

At no point during these undercooked and overexposed displays of melodrama, though, does “Song Sung Blue” ever express itself with even an ounce of sincerity less than that which Lightning and Thunder bring to every one of their dingy barroom shows. For them, all it took was a microphone, a keyboard, and two lovestruck entertainers who see nothing more—or rather, nothing left—than the light that hits a room full of smiles. For Craig Brewer, all it took was a man with a crew of his own equally attuned to the value of a crowd that wants nothing more than to hear “Sweet Caroline,” and comes to see so much more between the flash of every sequin and the crackle of every belted note.