John Carney, the director of “Once” and other beguiling romantic musical fairy tales, is not afraid to make a movie — or celebrate a song — that’s as sincere as the soft-rock albums you might be embarrassed to admit you own. Carney wants you to know that he owns them, too. An essential element of the Carney experience is the way his movies say, “Own your sappiness! Forget the embarrassment. If you can’t wear your heart on your sleeve, where else are you going wear it?”
“Once,” which Carney made for $160,000 in 2007, was a plaintive love-story duet, and the films he has directed since then, which have won him an ardent following — they include “Begin Again” (2013), “Sing Street” (2016), and “Flora and Son” (2023) — have been about unlikely partners who come together through song. So when we see the set-up of “Power Ballad,” his latest a-love-song-can-save-us confection, we think we know just where it’s headed. But we don’t.
The movie is about two characters who are seasoned musicians. Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is a wedding singer who has been living in Ireland for 15 years. He fronts a band called the Bride and Groove (“Ireland’s grooviest wedding band”), pumping out spirited versions of jukebox chestnuts (“Celebrate,” “The Boys Are Back in Town”). Rick is happily married, to an Irish woman named Rachel (Marcella Plunkett), and they have a 14-year-old daughter, Aja (Beth Fallon). He’s a man who likes his life. But once — ah, once — he had a dream. He led a band called Octogan, and they had a record contract and concert tours. They just never quite made it, in part because Rick took a year off when his daughter was born. Every once in a while, he’ll perform one of his songs during a wedding gig, and we see him imagining an arena full of screaming fans right in front of him. It’s a dream that passed, but one he can’t let go of.
Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas) has a dream too. He’s a former boy-band star who was once a teen idol. But that was 10 years ago. He’s now 27, with a great look and a lovely voice, but he missed his Justin Timberlake/Harry Styles window — the chance to leap into a solo career. He’s still trying, writing songs in his home studio, but the industry isn’t buying. It’s got him pigeonholed as an ex-boy band has-been.
The two meet at a wedding that takes place at an Irish castle. Rick and the band are playing at the reception; Danny is a childhood friend of the groom. At the groom’s request, he gets up to sing a song with the band (a blistering version of Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish”), and he and Rick click onstage. Later that night, the two run into each other on the castle grounds, and Danny invites Rick back to his room, where he has brought along his guitars and keyboard and home-studio computer. They start noodling around with chords and lyrics, the way musicians do, and they spark each other. Rick tones up a melody on one of the songs Danny’s been working on. Then Danny does the same thing for one of Rick’s songs. Drinking whiskey and playing into the night, the two find a groove, and we think: Of course they do. This is a John Carney movie. We’re seeing the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
But that’s not what happens. And here’s the real beauty part. I consider myself a Carney fan, but his movies don’t exactly have an edge to them. They’re gently funny and soothing; they’re about lonely people saving each other by striking chords of harmony. What they lack, in a word, is discord, the Sturm und Drang that’s the true stuff of movie drama. And “Power Ballad” may be the first Carney movie that genuinely has that. Which is why I think it’s not only his best film since “Once,” but one that has the potential to break out of the Carney bubble.
Danny returns to his austere mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and to his girlfriend (Havana Rose Liu), who likes the tune he’s been fooling around with, “How to Write a Song (Without You).” It’s an irresistible soft-rock anthem, all about how the singer can’t write a song unless his one true love is there to inspire it. Danny records the song, and it turns out to be his return ticket to popularity. The song is a hit; it gets millions of views; it jump-starts his career as a solo artist who can be taken seriously. There’s just one problem. Danny didn’t write it. He stole it from Rick.
Carney shoots the scene where Rick discovers this in an ingenious way. Rick is in a shopping mall, riding the escalator, and hears the song echoing distantly on the mall’s sound system. He’s like, Wait, I know this. I wrote this! The trouble is, he wrote it so long ago that he can’t find a recording file of it. He has no proof that he wrote it. And though Danny gave Rick his manager’s number, he is now giving Rick the brush-off. But he seemed like such a nice guy! How could he be doing that?
One of the cannier aspects of “Power Ballad” is that it never demonizes Danny, nor does it show him acting in a deliberately treacherous way. It’s all internalized. Yet we can read Nick Jonas’s super-sly performance to glimpse the ego and insecurity behind Danny’s decision to pass off Rick’s song as his own, and to rationalize it to himself. It’s a version of music-industry business as usual. (The ripping off of song credits has gone on for 100 years.)
But even as Danny rockets back to fame, “Power Ballad” is Rick’s story, and Paul Rudnick, in a performance that hits the true note, holds the movie in the palm of his hand. He doesn’t overplay anything. He shows us how Rick is on some level flattered to have his song out there, and also devastated that no one on Earth knows it’s his. Danny’s bro of a manager (Jack Reynor) won’t return his calls, and threatens legal action against him. Even Rick’s wife and daughter don’t quite believe him.
Yet what makes this a terrific story is how much we believe it. Rudd makes Rick a fully felt presence, a gifted musician with a dad-rock swagger who is suddenly lost in the angry despair of seeing his dream of pop success achieved, only now it’s a nightmare. Talk about a mix of emotions! And Carney tells the story in a way that’s consistently lively and funny without making the movie a “comedy.” Rick, for 15 years, has felt that he’s a loser. Now he has a chance to prove to the world that he’s not — but, more than that, to prove it to himself. After a while, he has but one recourse: to go to L.A. and confront Danny. That sounds like a total movie situation, but the way it plays out, at a party at Danny’s house that Rick and his goofy loyal Irish bandmate, Sandy (Peter McDonald), sneak into, is anything but predictable. It’s at once hilariously explosive and fully human.
We keep hearing “How to Write a Love Song (Without You),” as it becomes a #1 hit for Danny. And the song, while it sounds like something from a slightly earlier era of sentimental pop, is just pretty and convincing enough that you could almost imagine Lewis Capaldi having a moment with it. “Power Ballad,” like all John Carney movies, is rooted in his belief in the power of transcendence a great pop song can have. But this one also taps into themes of identity and ownership that touch on the mysteries of pop. Where does it come from? How does one person’s song become a universal dream? The movie ends with a Rosebud moment, and when it does, you may experience a shudder of happiness.
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