Review: Power Ballad – “A satisfying watch”

If you do something well, there’s no need to stop doing it.  Steven Spielberg is still exploring aliens.  Wes Anderson and Robert Eggers have instantly recognizable styles. Greta Gerwig champions her female characters.  John Carney creates movies driven by music, a central feature in his films.   

Starting with the impeccable Once in 2006, Carney has made stories that stir the soul and recognize the importance of music in our lives.  Begin Again, Sing Street, Flora and Son continued his tradition and now the Irish director returns to the recording studio and the streets of Dublin for Power Ballad.   

Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is the frontman of a wedding band, the Brides & Grooves.  But, while drunken wedding guests dance along to the covers the band plays, Rick fantasizes about being on stage at Madison Square Garden, singing his original songs.  Once, it might not have been that far off.  He was a member of a touring band that came to Ireland when he met his wife (Marcella Plunkett).  And he never left the Emerald Isle, quite willingly giving up his musician dream for his new family, which soon included daughter, Aja (Beth Fallon).  

When the Brides & Grooves get hired to play a wedding where a guest is a former member of a boy band, Rick has some things to say.  Those groups are just manufactured, the future of music is dead.  But then he meets Danny (Nick Jonas), and he ends up changing his tune, so to speak.  The two share a booze fuelled jam session, and Rick helps the struggling Danny with some songs, impressed that he is writing his own.  He encourages him to dig deep and write authentically to show his label he’s still relevant. 

Danny goes back to his life in Los Angeles and Rick continues his wedding gigs, not thinking anything of their creative night.  So Rick is surprised months later when he hears a song they worked on playing overhead in a mall.  Not just any song, but one that means a good deal to Rick. One he’s been working on for many years. Without proof that this song was originally his, Rick is left to decide how important the credit truly is, while Danny continues to ride the success of the hit single right up the Billboard charts. 

To say I’m a fan of Carney’s work is an understatement.  I love that he has found himself a niche, where his films aren’t a ‘musical’ exactly, just movies where music is a core element.  It makes the stories he tells more accessible to those who might be apt to turn their nose up at a traditional musical.  That doesn’t mean, though, that the music is ever less important.  It’s a driving factor in the narrative and/or the main characters.  The music symbolizes dreams big and small. It brings people together.  Audiences too.  

Power Ballad doesn’t stray from this too much, but it does ask us to consider what it means to create.  Where does an artist get their inspiration? The movie actually asks that out loud, but more subtly, it also wants us to acknowledge that creating something good is hard, and getting credit for that can be even harder.  As we follow Rick, a man whose chorus and verse are stolen and reworked, we wonder what authorship really means for him.  It’s more than money.  It’s recognition, that all the songs he’s written aren’t wasted time.  That his dream wasn’t far-fetched.  He’s good.  Just no one has told him that.  Now an entire world is singing his words.  

Paul Rudd performs exceptionally in this film, bringing not only his familiar charm, but also a grounded, emotional turn that is some of his best work.  He is also paired well with Nick Jonas, who is playing a character you have to imagine isn’t much out of his normal sphere.  So while he’s good, he doesn’t have to stretch himself as much as Rudd.  The pair make some good music and their scenes together are some of the best of the film.

Power Ballad is, as the genre of song in the title might suggest, mellow and a little slow to start before it builds into something more substantial.   It’s a solid entry into the “Carney Cinematic Universe” and if you catch a little throwback to a previous film in one of the scenes, you’ll get the impression that all his various musical stories take place within the same world. It’s a lovely detail for fans of his movies.  I’m not sure Power Ballad has the staying power of some of Carney’s other work, but it is still a satisfying watch that earns its surprisingly emotional punch in its final moments.  And, it might just have you humming long after you’ve left the theatre.