The year is young, but you are not likely to encounter in 2026 at the cinema two people who love life more than Mike Sardina and Claire Stingl in the wonderfully entertaining new movie Song Sung Blue. 

Mike, played by a rangy, companionable Hugh Jackman, is a striving singer in Milwaukee who has battled the bottle, cannot consistently pay his mortgage, and keeps himself going by appearing at the state fair dressed up to look (and sound) like Don Ho. Claire, meanwhile, is a single mother nursing her own dream of supporting herself with her voice, but she, too, pays the bills by impersonating a formerly famous star (Patsy Cline) and, in her case, by doing some hairdressing on the side. “I just want to sing and be happy and feel loved,” says Claire, who is played by Kate Hudson in a career-shifting role that finally liberates her from deathly dull romcoms and revives the spunky spirit that charmed audiences a quarter-century ago in Almost Famous (2000).