A new Kate for “Leopold”.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscars Quest ’26 continues! Once again we see how many among the latest wave of Academy Award nominees I can catch before the big ABC ceremony, even if I have to force myself to sit through some of them by repeating “Rules are rules” to myself until I accept my punishment.

In my childhood Neil Diamond was among the many artists who surrounded me daily in a not-great era of AM radio. I was raised on Top-40 charts that were a bouillabaisse of easy-listening lullabies, crossover country hits, and disco’s lingering death-throes. When I finally got control of a radio dial around age 11, I changed channels hard enough to yank off the knob and never turned back. I still get goosebumps whenever I hear or even remember “America”, and not the good kind of goosebumps — the other kind that’s more like a rash. In retrospect, unfairly or not, he’d become one of my many symbols of Everything Wrong With Previous Generations’ Music.

Long story why, but last year my wife and I made the mistake of watching the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer starring Diamond as a middle-aged “fellow kid”, an aspiring schmaltzy singer whose name may or may not have been Schlemiel Schliamond. After an early scene of him helping some musician buddies by doing blackface, soon he’s discovered and becomes popular and insufferable. I’d say it was all downhill from there, but that’s assuming we were ever at the top of a hill to begin with. We keep plummeting till the grand finale with, of course, Diamond belting out “America” while his extremely faithfully Jewish dad (Academy Award Winner The Sir Laurence Olivier! I Am Not Making This Up) applauds like a bell-bottomed teenybopper and forgives his son’s multitude of sins and enormous ego. By then I was coughing up the kind of laughter that feels like the other kind of goosebumps have sprouted in your lungs. For a howler of a digestif, I looked up Roger Ebert’s one-star review, which was one for the ages.

In an uncanny bit of cosmic timing, two weeks later Universal dropped the first trailer for Song Sung Blue, a biopic with Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as Mike and Claire Sardina, the real-life stars of a Neil Diamond tribute act. I did not run right out and buy advance tickets. But here we are anyway, because Oscars Quest. Permission granted to treat me as a hostile witness.

The Gist: Mike’s true story begins in the late ’80s, though the film pushes the timeline back with early-’90s signposts (e.g., a TV showing one of James Marsden’s 1993 guest spots on The Nanny), when a doomed gig as a Don Ho impersonator (don’t ask) leads him to a meet-cute with Claire Stengl, who’s dolled up as Patsy Cline. They find lots in common — they both make a living singing other people’s songs in cosplay, they both have teenage daughters (plus a spare tween, in Claire’s case), they’re both unattached, and they both could use more money. Claire suggests Mike channel his musical frustrations into doing Neil Diamond instead, denying us the chance to hear Jackman sing “Tiny Bubbles”. Mike does his homework, ropes her in, and the duo of Lightning and Thunder is born, purveyors of a “Neil Diamond experience” who become big in Milwaukee, just like Laverne and Shirley.

Alas, cruel fate throws challenges at them much harsher than either Lenny or Squiggy. Mike is a Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic who occasionally suffers Chekhov’s Chest Pains, though his stress levels increase once he becomes the sort of obsessive Neil Diamond geek who thinks it’s his mission to remind the world that Diamond was not a one-hit wonder, that he wrote way more songs than just “Sweet Caroline” (whose three-note hook becomes a That Thing You Do!-level running gag), and whose “Soolaimon” is one of the all-time greats that must open their every show or else the audience can’t possibly be real Neil Diamond fans.

By contrast, Claire is pretty okay and sane and supportive until a one-in-a-million accident befalls her that turns their world upside-down. Their Behind the Music episode takes a grim turn and their struggles endanger all their tribute-act accomplishments, their relationship and maybe even their lives. Could this be the end of Lightning and Thunder?

The familiar faces: Fellow impersonators include The Sopranos‘ Michael Imperioli as a Buddy Holly imitator (and estranged pal who soon reconciles with Mike), Mustafa Shakir (Bushmaster from Luke Cage) as a faux James Brown with the perfect stage name of Sex Machine, and Jayson Warner Smith (The Walking Dead) as the mandatory Elvis. Off stage, Fisher Stevens (Succession, Short Circuit) is Mike’s manager and dentist, because local music scenes don’t necessarily pay all the bills. Jim Belushi, aging nicely into a new career phase, does a solid turn as L&T’s devoted manager. Nickelodeon survivor Ella Anderson (Henry Danger) is Claire’s daughter.

The Impressions: Writer/director Craig Brewer (Coming 2 America, the Oscar-winning Hustle & Flow) doesn’t steer away from the usual rags-to-riches-to-tragedy-to-triumph biopic arc, but overt familiarity is sort of the point here. Just as Mike and Claire salute Diamond, Brewer salutes Mike and Claire. Jackman and Hudson are literally a tribute act to a tribute act (holy plagiarismo di plagiarismo!), which seems a frivolous notion better suited to a happy Hallmark flick than a 2020s theatrical feature. Nevertheless, the Sardinas do share an unusual true story with its own shocks and sorrows, with some events seeming too wild to be true. Among other developments, I checked afterward and confirmed that, yes, they did once share a stage with Pearl Jam. (And ohhh, how gray and wrinkled I felt to see Eddie Vedder appear as a character, thirty-three years after Singles.)

Song Sung Blue aims mainly for the Diamond-heads, those who can appreciate the music and who might be old enough to miss the good ol’ days when theaters used to show lots more films like this. But to my relief, Brewer allows glimmers of self-aware nods to the Diamond-averse like me (as when a biker in a rowdy bar yells at Our Heroes on stage, “NEIL DIAMOND SUCKS!”). Even for us skeptics, our two leads deliver their strongest performances in a good while that yearn for our empathy. Jackman remains ever the ebullient song-and-dance showman and the intense bearer of burdensome gravitas throughout Mike’s vicissitudes — a charismatic fireball for the ladies on stage, an intense griever of woes away from the limelight. Anyone who’s appreciated his works outside the Marvel universe shouldn’t be disappointed here.

For me the greater surprise was Hudson. I’m not sure I’ve seen her in much since Almost Famous, but in many ways she has the tougher times to balance. Claire’s journey from musical partner to Concerned Wife detours with an unexpected jaw-drop (unless you’re a Milwaukeean who already knew her story or you caught the spoiler in the trailer) and arguably goes even darker than Mike’s. I was reminded of Rose Byrne’s turn in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, competing directly with Hudson for Best Actress this year and whose character likewise suffers a Job-like time of nonstop tribulations that threaten to crush her spirit, all the more so when each beleaguered woman keeps making terrible choices. Whereas Byrne’s character is fictionally driven toward bleaker cliffs that were maddening to witness (and whose black-comedy aspects were mostly at her expense), Claire's ordeal has the benefit of a light at the end of her tunnel. It's dim, but it's still a light. In some respects it's a tad old-fashioned, but Hudson weathers the downside and holds onto our hopes toward the end.

Ultimately what bonds Mike and Claire in their darkest hours is the healing power of nostalgia. Sure, Lightning and Thunder serve up a Neil Diamond alternative to those who can't score tickets to actual Diamond gigs and/or who don't mind buying cheaper tickets for doppelgangers, but there's a reason folks show up for tribute acts. Sometimes they crave the throwbacks to their childhoods as a reprieve from the rigors of adulthood or the horrors of the present, and there are always horrors in The Present, not just the current present. They’re an escape hatch to ardent listeners, familiarity as a salve applied to the emotional wounds of everyday living. Just as Mike and Claire prescribed that secondhand medicine to attendees, so do they need it themselves as Claire’s laid low and spiraling ever downward, faster than Mike can plummet to catch her, and Mike in turn despairs at possibly being crushed in the process.

I’m still not a Diamond fan and I cringed just now remembering “America” again even though it wasn’t in the film, but for other viewers, Song Sung Blue might bring them a certain joy in a moment when they could use some. Brewer, Jackman and Hudson at least spoke to me convincingly enough that I could get what they got from it. More importantly, I’m relieved this was better than The Jazz Singer.

The end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Song Sung Blue end credits, but the final image is Lightning and Thunder’s official band symbol. Large-font special thanks are given to Diamond and Vedder, and fans clamoring for an encore can stick around for the Jackman/Hudson covers of “Crunchy Granola Suite”, “Holly Holy”, and “Forever in Blue Jeans”, all of which sound more like titles of Diamond parody songs than his actual song titles, but that’s just me.