Here is a startlingly strange, undeniably entertaining true-life story from the heartland of American showbusiness; a lovable crowdpleaser whose feelgood flavour won’t prepare you for the way the plot repeatedly and savagely twists like an unsafe fairground ride. I actually had my eyes closed and mouth open at certain key points, and was grabbing the seat in front of me with both fists. It also may yet prove that, yes, Hugh Jackman really is the greatest showman (his role here is much more interesting than his bland impersonation of PT Barnum) and his co-star Kate Hudson brings just the same performance megawattage.
Mike and Claire Sardina, terrifically played by Jackman and Hudson, were a Milwaukee married couple with kids from previous relationships who in the 90s formed a cheesy Neil Diamond tribute act called Lightning and Thunder; they became a cult hit in their home state and even opened for Pearl Jam whose guitarist Eddie Vedder good-naturedly joined them on stage for an encore. But things were not easy for them, and this film broods on how tough it is when the lightning of ill fortune strikes more than once.
It is in fact adapted from an existing documentary of the same title from 2008 by Greg Kohs about this stranger-than-fiction world, a film that was heavily reliant on the couple’s family archive of home video – and it’s fair to say that the documentary puts more emphasis on the delusional and absurd aspects of Mike and Claire’s life. But that’s not how this film from writer-director Craig Brewer reinvents their story. He, Jackman and Hudson turn the laugh-at into laugh-with. Jackman absolutely crushes it as a Neil Diamond impersonator, sounding almost like him, and looking almost like him; he’s perfectly plausible as someone who isn’t supposed to be in the big league but who clearly has the chops (and the pipes) to carry a show. Mike is a Vietnam veteran and recovering alcoholic who insists on playing his guitar at 12-step meetings so the other people in AA have a sense of his journey. It’s very funny when he practises singing Diamond’s Cracklin’ Rose at home in his underpants and painfully strains a groin muscle while cavorting.
Hudson is also excellent, doing her own singing as Claire, who before she joined Mike in the Neil Diamond tribute world had a thriving act as Patsy Cline; she is shown belting out Cline numbers although there is one Cline standard that this film interestingly misses out. Michael Imperioli plays a Buddy Holly impersonator called Mark and Mustafa Shakir is a James Brown act called Sex Machine. Ella Anderson plays Claire’s teen daughter Rachel, and King Princess is Mike’s daughter Angelina of about the same age – and their burgeoning friendship is another underplayed aspect of the film’s likability.
Irony and satire have been surgically removed from Mike and Claire’s heart-stoppingly eventful life stories, and in their place Brewer substitutes those qualities that the couple themselves would have been aware of: the vulnerability and loneliness of trying to make it in the margins of the music industry, or for that matter making it anywhere and in any business. This is a never-say-die story and its cheerful optimism makes it a calorific Christmas treat.