Song Sung Blue, about a pair of Neil Diamond tribute singers, conveniently hides behind its “true story” credentials. Enough of its improbable events are true that the film feels licensed to gussy up this story of Wisconsin big dreamers in whichever ways it likes.
But the problem with this brand of Hollywood tale is that, by excessively romanticising their subjects, they diminish their humanity. Greg Kohs’s 2008 documentary of the same name, which provided writer-director Craig Brewer with his inspiration, had a curiosity about how Mike and Claire Sardina responded to misfortune and to the slow realisation that their dreams were being wrested from them. But, in Brewer’s hands, their interior worlds are reduced to two modes of existence: triumph and tragedy.
