Film reviews: Song Sung Blue | Peter Hujar’s Day | The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants
Hugh Jackman gives a typically empathetic, all-in performance as a covers band singer in Song Sung Blue, writes Alistair Harkness
Song Sung Blue (12A) ★★★☆☆
Peter Hujar’s Day (12A) ★★★★☆
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (PG) ★★☆☆☆
Perhaps it’s a sign of the pop-will-eat-itself-nature of Hollywood that we’ve cycled through the music biopic roster so extensively that we’re now getting movies about tribute acts, but Song Sung Blue’s stranger-than-fiction tale of a Neil Diamond impersonator’s turbulent life comes with the sort wild twists that almost justify the celebrity downsizing.
The key word there is almost. Though Hugh Jackman gives a typically empathetic, all-in performance as Mike Sardina, a covers band singer who finds local fame with with his new wife Claire (Kate Hudson) when they form a tribute act called Lightning and Thunder (he’s Lightning, she’s Thunder) to perform an elaborate stage show inspired by the music of Neil Diamond, the film itself mostly adheres to the standard biopic clichés. There are battles with sobriety and mental health issues, and familial dysfunction and tragedy to overcome, all of it punctuated with performance scenes when what happens on stage transcends all the problems off it.
But the difference here is that the protagonists’ slightly delusional ambitions to entertain are rooted in the mundane reality of ordinary people trying to hold their lives together. As such, the film feels like a bit of a missed opportunity that writer/director Craig Brewer (who based it on a 2008 documentary), doesn’t really interrogate this disparity beyond Mike’s stated dislike of performing Sweet Caroline. And yet, the way Mike and Claire’s lives are upended by an out-of-the-blue tragedy — it’s best not to know too much going in — gives the film a weird, soapy, melodramatic energy that’s oddly compelling.
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The performance scenes, meanwhile, are done with sincerity, but also enough tacky panache to capture the weird vibe of a tribute show — though it’s ironic that in a movie full of celebrity impersonators, when someone is required to play actual rock star in the form of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder (Lightning and Thunder opened for Pearl Jam in the early 1990s) the filmmakers couldn’t have found a less convincing double if they’d tried.
Based on a recently discovered transcript of a 1974 interview between acclaimed photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz — both luminaries of the 1970s New York art scene — Peter Hujar’s Day offers a fascinating snapshot of the life of an artist in a much mythologised time. Written and directed by Ira Sachs (Passages), and starring Ben Wishaw as Hujar and Rebecca Hall as Rosenkrantz, it uses the conceit of the interview Rosenkrantz was conducting for a never-realised book project about what artists do all day as a way of exploring the ephemeral nature of great art.
As Hujar recounts his previous day’s activities — which mostly involved taking a few pictures — their surface banality gives way to something far more fascinating as we tune into the fact he’s talking in such a matter-of-fact way about photographing Allen Ginsberg, and talking to the likes of Susan Sontag. But as we watch them lounging around Rosenkrantz’s scuzzy loft apartment or chatting on the roof, Sachs — shooting in 16mm — repeatedly interrupts the conversation with jump cuts, classical music interludes, and fourth-wall-breaking behind-the-scenes shots to draw attention to the film’s own artifice. It’s a sly way of reminding us how art can reveal something truthful and profound in the moments we think are insignificant.
It’s been 21 years since kids’ TV favourite SpongeBob SquarePants first made the jump from small to big screen with the entertainingly surreal The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. That’s theoretically enough time — but only just — for that first generation of fans to have small kids of their own and indulge in a little nostalgia for their recent youth. If so, they’ll be poorly served by The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, which is really just another brand expanding spin-off offering chaotic visuals and a nominal plot involving a pirate curse. That’s hardly surprising given the character has never been off TV in the years since. But while there’s nothing wrong with providing pure cinematic silliness for five, six and seven-year-olds, there’s no joy or craft in the jokes on offer; it’s just a barrage of zaniness. But if you must go, it’s preceded by a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated short that’s pretty fun.
Song Sung Blue is in cinemas from 1 January; Peter Hujar’s Day is in cinemas from 2 January; The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is in cinemas from 26 December
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