Is it real or is it...?

"Song Sung Blue" tells a true story about imitation.

“Everybody’s in show-biz, it doesn’t matter who you are”, Ray Davies sang in a heartfelt reflection on how the illusions of art and the humdrum pace of reality have gradually conjoined. But that was fifty-three ago, and the nostalgic/skeptical Kinks songwriter had no idea what kind of mutations a half-century of stirring the imaginary and the ordinary could produce. That’s one of the themes laid bare, if not directly examined, by “Song Sung Blue” , a dramatized version (that’s one point for fantasy) of a documentary film (1 for reality) about a couple working in one of the stranger tributaries of fandom, celebrity impersonation ( a half-point for artifice?), hitching their fate on the fame and glamour of a star, once removed, applying the sincerest form of flattery to superstar Neil Diamond (Show-Biz for the win!).

Neil Diamond, for the benefit of any young readers, was a singer and songwriter who had a string of hit records in the Top 40 for more than two decades, (three decades if you count the “Adult Contemporary” charts), sold millions of concert tickets and even survived a disastrous attempt to transition into movie stardom in a 1980 remake of “The Jazz Singer” (yes, there is a scene in blackface). He took pseudo-spiritual themes, the intensity of a gospel tent show and the beat of r-and-b and soul music and somehow turned them into the closest thing pop music had to the sweat and glamor of a Las Vegas lounge act. (Yes, post-“comeback” Elvis was doing sort of the same thing at the time, which becomes a recurring joke in “Song Sung Blue”). His song “Sweet Caroline” is still a staple for sports arenas worldwide (and having read this, you’ve already got that three-note passage in your head – which is also one of the film’s running jokes). In short, Neil Diamond was perfect for the world of bowling-alley and county fair celebrity impersonation shows. What he might lack in Rock Pantheon status, he makes up in hair, sequins and descending necklines.

The new film, written and directed by Craig Brewer, is the reportedly true story (I haven’t seen the documentary of the same name, so I’ll give Brewer the benefit of the doubt) of Mike and Claire Sardina (Hugh Jackson and Kate Hudson, both perfectly appealing), two amateur singers in Milwaukee who fall in love, find a small measure of success with their Diamond tribute as “Lightning and Thunder” (he’s Lightning – he already had the stage clothes to go with the name) and face enough personal upsets for a half-dozen films– dismemberment, mental illness, substance abuse, teen pregnancy among them. (Surprisingly, although the film spends a great deal of time establishing that Mike is a 20-year-sober alcoholic, that particular Chekhovian gun remains on the wall).

It is perhaps unsurprising that “Song Sung Blue” is a very unbalanced and even unstable film, bouncing from mild satire to tortured melodrama, a medley of feel-good-oldies to followed by a montage of tragedy. For the first hour, it’s about the ambitions and amiable delusions of would-be entertainers, balanced with a lightly inexplicable reverence toward the artist who gave us “Cherry Cherry” and “Forever in Blue Jeans”. As in his earlier “Dolemite Is My Name”, Brewer admires the implausible innocence of these star-struck amateurs, but he also shows that they see their own silliness. He’s even willing to let a little bit of the air out of the Diamond-idolatry of his subject. (We know Mike’s musical taste is a bit questionable; in the first scene, he describes his on-stage persona as “a Rock God – like Chuck Berry, Barry Manilow and the Beatles all rolled into one”).

If the first hour of “Song Sung Blue” coasts on simple good-naturedness, that same quality makes the remainder of so jolting; the film becomes a Greatest Hits collection of tearjerker moments, a weekend marathon of “Lifetime” movies reduced to a single hour. The misfortune that befell the Sardinas may all be true, but the film lets them play out like beats in an action sequence, each trying to top the previous one with rarely a moment in between to reflect on the characters and their emotional lives,

Having said that, I know that many audiences are willing to go along for the melodramatic ride and the not-too-subtle emotional push at the end. And in a way, that fits the film’s message of show-biz innocence and illusion. “I’m an entertainer” Mike states at the film’s beginning, and we see under the mask, never forget that he’s not the real Neil Diamond. Brewer is just as blatant about playing all of his emotional cards, but the fact that he’s lifted the curtain on his narrative tricks doesn’t necessarily suspend the effectiveness. The strange balancing act doesn’t always work in “Song Sung Blue”, but you have to give Brewer and his cast credit for trying. At best, the film hopes to be as reassuring as a convincing musical impersonation. The audience knows that strings are being pulled, but the old songs manage to hit the spot anyway.

Sorry, folks, I went a little long with this one… but tell your friends anyway. Print it out and post it on all of the telephone poles in your neighborhood. Share. Subscribe. Barter. Whatever it takes.