“Love Finds a Way.”
That’s the glittery tagline for Song Sung Blue, the upcoming feel-good Christmas movie about the world’s scrappiest Neil Diamond cover band, Lightning & Thunder. The second trailer for the movie starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson expands on the first peek at the struggling musicians who rise to fame as a Diamond-covering duo. The Craig Brewer-written and directed movie is based on the 2008 documentary of the same name that told the improbable story of Milwaukee husband and wife duo Mike and Claire Sardina.
Expanding on the tease in the first trailer, which dropped in September, the new, nearly three-minute preview opens with Jackman’s long-haired Mike Sardina confessing, “I’m not a songwriter, I’m not a sex symbol, but I am an entertainer,” as Hudson stares into a mirror and says, “I don’t wanna be a hairdresser. I wanna sing. I wanna dance. I wanna be able to say, ‘Look at me, I made it.’”
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Jackman spots Hudson singing Diamond’s pop classic “Sweet Caroline” while wearing a fringed western get-up, asking if she’s supposed to be Loretta Lynn. “Patsy Cline,” Hudson says. “[If] my boobs were just a bit bigger I could be Dolly [Parton].”
That sets off a romance and a bedazzled collaboration as the couple join forces to front a Diamond covers band called Lightning & Thunder. When Jackman tries to explain the concept to some friends and bandmates who are skeptical about the pair doing a Neil Diamond “show,” the actor — who has starred in a number of Broadway musicals in real life — corrects them. “Nuh-uh, a Neil Diamond experience,” he explains.
Not only do they start selling out shows, but at one point Jackman’s Sardina asks, “what’s a Pearl Jam?” when he finds out that the duo have gotten booked to warm up the stage for the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. “I guess we’re opening for Pearl Jam,” Jackman says with a smile before things go pear-shaped after Hudson is hit by a runaway car.
As the music turns maudlin, a wheelchair-bound Hudson laments, “we were so close.” Soon enough, the couple’s band rallies around them and they get the group back together for a triumphant return to form, starting from the bottom up.
The film due out on Dec. 25 co-stars Michael Imperioli, Ella Anderson, musician King Princess, (in her first movie role) Mustafa Shakir, Hudson Hensley, Fisher Stevens and Jim Belushi.
Watch the second Song Sung Blue trailer below.
