The other day, I bought a Neil Diamond compilation album in a vintage shop — 20 Golden Songs, compiled in 1975 for the German market — for just one euro. Considering the wealth of wonderful songs on the album (“Cracklin Rosie’,” [1970] “I Am… I Said…,” [1971] “High Rolling Man,” [1972] etc), this price felt more than justified. But naturally, when I came to his biggest hit, “Sweet Caroline,” [1969] kicking off the B-side, the record jittered, sputtered, skipped, repeated itself; worn down and broken from overuse.
To the uninitiated, Neil Diamond has always been about “Sweet Caroline.” The song transcends the artist, and has even become something of the de facto anthem for both English national football teams (especially the women!) It’s easy to see Diamond as a belter, a crooner, and not a complex figure. But listen carefully to the oriental arrangements and stylings of “Soolaimon” [1970] or the lush gospel harmonies in “Holly Holy” [1969], and you see that Diamond is a far more fascinating and subtle artist than the current football stadium reputation he carries.
This is a sentiment Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) — the protagonist of Song Sung Blue1 Not to be confused with A Song Sung Blue (Zihan Geng, 2023), which played Cannes a couple of years back. (Craig Brewer, 2025) — certainly shares. While he loves “Sweet Caroline,” he believes there’s so much more to the singer than his biggest hit. In fact, the pub rock singer, known by his cheesy nickname Lightning, adores Diamond so much that he doesn’t even want to try to imitate him. But something changes when he meets the Patsy Cline tribute singer Claire (Kate Hudson), who inspires him to chase his ultimate musical dream. His lightning meets her thunder; together they form, well, Lightning & Thunder, a marital duo dedicated to all things Diamond.
Of course, I went into this movie expecting another tired take on musical fame like that terrible Springsteen mental health movie or the perfectly fine Rocket Man (Dexter Fletcher, 2019). But the key difference between this and the recent crop of ticking-each-musical-moment-box-off movies is that this is not a story about Neil Diamond, but about two people forming their own “Neil Diamond experience.” Yet, neither is it really a story about being a Neil Diamond tribute act either; instead, it’s a deeply human depiction of how music can help us escape our problems and transcend our humdrum reality. By using Diamond as a “vibe setter” rather than a holy figure, Song Sung Blue works on its own without the need to know anything extraneous about the artist itself — something you can’t say about any other musical biopic released in recent years.
Jackman, playing a 20-year-sober-alcoholic-turned-musical-obsessive, is perfectly fine; it’s nothing you haven’t seen from him before. Instead, the movie’s huge appeal comes from Kate Hudson, who has never been better. She has one of the most powerful and inviting smiles in cinema. Her best acting asset, it seems to brighten up her entire face, and the screen with it. Her affable, easygoing charm magically elevated a lot of movies in the 00s — such as Raising Helen (Garry Marshall, 2004) and Fools Gold (Andy Tennant, 2008) — that would’ve been much, much worse, possibly terrible, without her. Now, increasingly looking like her mother, Goldie Hawn, in her prime, Hudson is a revelation, using her charm to elevate this tale into something truly heartfelt and sweet.
As she charts the various travails of her character, including a devastating development at the halfway point, we see her use that smile as a weapon; to heighten tragedy, to hide disappointment and, finally, to portray a great wellspring of resilience. As it’s hidden in a kind of mid-budget, yet surprisingly well-crafted2Lots of small yet powerful camera movements that complement character here, lovely, smart edits, no dud or draggy scenes. movie that isn’t quite a musical yet isn’t an out-and-out comedy either, it might be the kind of performance that goes completely under the radar. Yet, for those of us (me), who thought that Kate Hudson never lost it after Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000), this weird and cheesy movie — that barrels through about 57000 montages in the space of just two hours — feels a lot like validation.
Good movies never felt so good.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.