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When Milwaukee Met Neil Diamond and Created Magic in Sequins

Forget the Bob Dylan treatment of A Complete Unknown or the Springsteen saga percolating in Deliver Me from Nowhere. Song Sung Blue director Craig Brewer has taken the biopic road less traveled. Scratch that, he’s basically bushwhacked through uncharted territory with a machete made of rhinestones and Neil Diamond 8-tracks. Song Sung Blue isn’t about the Jewish Elvis himself; it’s about Mike and Claire Sardina, the Milwaukee tribute artists who transformed “Sweet Caroline” into their personal anthem of survival. (Yes, this is based on a true story.)

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson inhabit these real people (whose documentary of the same name is trapped behind Mubi’s paywall like some kind of streaming Rapunzel) with the kind of commitment usually reserved for method actors preparing to play serial killers or Nobel laureates. Jackman and Hudson (both genetically incapable of looking like actual Milwaukee residents) somehow make you forget they’re Hollywood royalty slumming it in America’s Dairyland. The costume department deserves hazard pay for achieving period-perfect Midwestern fashion that screams “JCPenney clearance rack circa 2003” with devastating accuracy. Every bedazzled vest, every frosted tip, every department store leather jacket feels like it was excavated from a time capsule buried beneath a Wisconsin State Fair beer tent.

The film opens with Mike “Lightning” Sardina (Jackman, cranked up to eleven and refusing to apologize for it) and Claire Stengl (Hudson, radiating strip-mall glamour) grinding through the celebrity impersonator circuit. They’re performing for audiences who are three beers deep and couldn’t care less, in venues where the floors are sticky with spilled dreams and stale Leinenkugel’s. Their meet-cute backstage isn’t just cute—it’s Milwaukee cute, which means it involves arguing about set lists and sharing gas station coffee.

What follows is a love story told in power ballads and polyester, charting their evolution from solo acts to Lightning and Thunder, a Neil Diamond tribute band that treats “Cherry Cherry” like it’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Brewer, who previously gave us the glorious Dolemite Is My Name, understands that there’s profound dignity in small-town dreamers who refuse to accept that their ship has sailed, docked, and been converted into a floating casino.

Hudson’s Claire is a revelation wrapped in sequins and sensible shoes. She’s not playing dress-up as a working-class hero; she’s channeling every small-town woman who’s ever believed that the right song at the right moment could change everything. Her Midwestern accent doesn’t feel like an affectation; it feels like armor, protecting a heart that’s been broken but refuses to stop believing in the transformative power of a good key change. When tragedy strikes (a freak accident that would feel manipulative if it wasn’t, you know, actually true), Hudson shows us how pain can curdle joy into something unrecognizable, turning Claire from the life of the party into its ghost.

Jackman, meanwhile, plays Lightning like he’s the lovechild of Elvis and a Wisconsin cheese curd: greasy, addictive, and quintessentially American. His commitment to Lightning’s delusions of grandeur is so complete, so earnest, that what could have been mockery becomes something approaching nobility. This is a man who treats every Moose Lodge like Madison Square Garden, who sees a standing ovation in three drunk guys clapping off-beat. It’s simultaneously too much and exactly right.

The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli as a bitter Buddy Holly impersonator provides the film’s best laughs, while King Princess and Ella Anderson, as the couple’s respective daughters-turned-stepsisters, ground the story in genuine emotional stakes. Jim Belushi shows up doing his Jim Belushi thing, which works perfectly in this context, like finding a vintage bowling shirt that inexplicably makes your whole outfit come together.

The hair department deserves its own paragraph. Every follicle tells a story of Aqua Net ambitions and Great Clips reality. The period-perfect coiffures aren’t just accurate; they’re archaeological artifacts of early 2000s Midwestern style, when frosted tips were a personality trait and hair gel was bought by the gallon.

And then there are the songs. Oh, the songs. From the opening strains of the title track to the climactic “America,” every Neil Diamond number is deployed like lyrical TNT. Even “Soolaimon”—which becomes a running gag about the deep cuts nobody wants to hear—works precisely because it shouldn’t. (This isn’t the first time Neil Diamond has been cinematically weaponized; Saving Silverman walked so Song Sung Blue could run, then trip, then get back up and keep running while bedazzled.)

Brewer doesn’t sand down the rough edges or prettify the pain. When Claire’s accident threatens to destroy everything they’ve built, the story doesn’t retreat into feel-good platitudes. Instead, it shows us what happens when the music stops, when the sequins can’t hide the scars, when “good times never seemed so good” becomes a cruel jab. Here’s what elevates Song Sung Blue from quirky regional curiosity to something approaching profound: it knows that for people like the Sardinas, Neil Diamond isn’t just music—it’s theology. Every “bah bah bah” is a prayer, every key change a small resurrection. The film treats their devotion with the seriousness it deserves, never winking at the audience or apologizing for its subjects’ sincerity.

In an era where every musician from Carole King to Weird Al is getting the prestige biopic treatment, Song Sung Blue dares to ask, What about the people who didn’t write the songs, but lived them? What about the tribute artists in tertiary markets, the wedding singers, the karaoke warriors who treat “Cracklin’ Rosie” like high art?

The answer, it turns out, is that their stories might be even more interesting than the originals. Because while Neil Diamond was selling out arenas, Mike and Claire Sardina were proving that glory comes in all sizes. Sometimes it’s Madison Square Garden, sometimes it’s a supper club in Sheboygan. Both require the same amount of heart.

Song Sung Blue isn’t just good; it’s touching in ways that sneak up on you, like finding yourself unconsciously swaying to a song you claimed to hate. It’s a story that believes—truly, madly, deeply believes—that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, only pleasure. That tribute bands aren’t copying; they’re interpreting.

Bring tissues for the tragedy, friends for the triumph, and prepare to leave the theater humming “Sweet Caroline” like it’s a battle hymn. Because in Brewer’s capable hands, that’s exactly what it becomes—an anthem for everyone who’s ever dared to dream in sequins, who’s ever believed that the right song could save their life, who’s ever thought that maybe, just maybe, good times really never seemed so good.