Rent Song Sung Blue (2025)

A Pleasant Singalong that Outstays Its Welcome - Song Sung Blue review by griggs

There’s a particular kind of Sunday-afternoon comfort movie that knows exactly what it’s doing: warm your hands, pat your head, send you home humming. This one mostly delivers. It’s genuinely good fun — the sort of crowd-pleaser that coasts on charm, good will, and musical performances that carry the feelings when the story pauses for breath.

The snag is the runtime: it’s 132 minutes, and you feel every extra chorus. After a while it starts repeating itself like a favourite tune that won’t stop asking for “just one more”. Shave half an hour and it’d have a bit more spring. Hugh Jackman is effortlessly likeable and technically bulletproof, but Kate Hudson is the surprise package — she walks off with scenes so casually you almost miss the skill.

Jim Belushi popping up is a bonus. Pleasant, slightly overstuffed, and likely to fade fast — but it sings while it’s playing.

Had me hooked throughout. - Song Sung Blue review by JF

This is ONE emotional rollercoaster. As I write this, Forever in Blue Jeans is still going through my head.

Overlong, indulgent melodramatic soapy movie based on a documentary about a real-life act/couple - Song Sung Blue review by PV

The first half an hour of this was great, 4 stars. It got the balance right wing singalong and performance, backstory, character, establishing shots.

Then it all turns into a TV soap with songs, a tear-jerking melodrama punctuated by Neil Diamond songs.

He's a great songwriter, born at the right time, from a Jewish family and diamond is his real name (or probably the one given to his Polish grandparents at Ellis Island). I think he's always been bigger as an act in the USA< esp in the 1970s. As a songwriter he was lucky to live at the (long-gone) time publishers hired youngsters to write songs on a salary. He wrote Daydream Believer by the Monkees and of course Red Red Wine (number 1 for UB40 in the UK in 1983 and in the USA 5 years later, bizarrely). It's a song on his second album in 1967. UB40 only heard the reggae cover version before recording it.

The soapy melodrama was too much for me. Yes it's based on a true story,. Based. But the schmaltz is layered on with a trowel, and lots of it. Sure, screenwriters all learn they should up the ante, create obstacles to the goal, remember jeopardy but... you can overdo it. Here, some stuff is true, but I do not think there';s a soap storyline not covered here (NO SPOILERS). And of course the final act is all timed to coincide (NO SPOILERS).

As for the singalong parts. Maybe too many and on for too long. Not sure. If I liked the song, fine; though repeated shots of stage school kids showing off in the crowd made me close my eyes for some sections!

NOT a bad film at all. It starts as a 4 star film, original and inspired by truth (which I have looked up - the real-life Mike died age 55 in 2006 after banging his head in a fall, heart issues). AND the 2 leads can sing and the musicians can play - probably better than the real-life couple and band (which often happens - looking at you Lisa Minelli in Cabaret who was way better than Sally Bowles ever was).

A solid biopic. Not perfect, too long, too soapy and melodramatic, but great songs so 3 stars.