Imagine you’re the lead singer of a wedding band – you were once filled with rock and roll dreams of headlining Madison Square Garden, but that dream has long passed you by. But one night, a famous pop star shows up at the wedding you’re playing, and you strike up a conversation after your set. You take a shine to each other, and spend the night jamming away – sharing songs, sharing stories, and bonding over your shared love of music.
Sounds like a fantasy, right? Well, “Power Ballad,” the new film from John Carney, is all about breaking that fantasy. And, finding out that the real dream was right in front of you all along.
As far as Carney films about music go, “Power Ballad” certainly has some flaws, particularly where tone is concerned. But Carney, whose previous work includes “Once” and “Sing Street,” continues to prove that no one has quite as much of a grasp on musical dramedy as he does. There’s a version of “Power Ballad” that’s far too cheesy and whimsical for its own good, but Carney steeps the film in a sense of reality without compromising on charm.
The wedding singer is Rick Power (Paul Rudd), a former rock band singer who gave us his arena tour dreams to marry his Irish girlfriend Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) and stay in Ireland to raise their daughter, Aja (Beth Fallon). The pop star is Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a washed-up former boy band member struggling to break out with a solo career. After Danny and Rick meet at a wedding, they spend the night swapping songs back and forth – including one of Rick’s called “How to Write a Song (Without You).”
Six months later, Rick hears Danny crooning out a new version of the song – but one that is still distinctly the song Rick wrote – over the loudspeakers at a mall. “How to Write a Song (Without You)” quickly becomes a number one hit, catapulting Danny out of the realm of has-been and into that of certified pop sensation. There’s just one problem – he’s refusing to give Rick credit, claiming the song as completely his own.
One of the toughest aspects of “Power Ballad” is the music itself – or, how the audience is asked to categorize the music. “How to Write a Song (Without You)” is the best of these songs, a solid pop ballad that feels like something someone who used to be in a boy band might tackle. But Rick himself spends a lot of time decrying the loss of rock and roll – and the fact that this particular song was written by him makes you wonder what, exactly, he considers rock and roll (probably more Coldplay than Led Zeppelin).
The movie, at least, seems a little bit aware of this. In an early scene, one of Rick’s bandmates reprimands him for ending their wedding set with an original song, calling Rick’s genre of choice, “late 80s, possible early 90s, hard-to-define rock.” But the music in general just doesn’t stand up to some of Carney’s other films. When Rick and Danny are having their big jam session, they keep complimenting each other’s songs, telling each other how great they are, and it’s kind of like … are they? It’s hard to say.
Music aside, “Power Ballad” works in the sense that it’s unwilling to play to the lowest common denominator of story, less interested in a feel-good reconciliation than it is the complexities of what it means to actually feel content in your art. The more we get to know Danny, the more the sweet, sensitive, fantasy version of him that Rick met that night at the wedding congeals into something far more corroded and cowardly.
In a climactic moment where he and Rick see each other for the first time since the song became a hit, he breaks down at Rick’s pleas for the truth, starts screaming about how Rick could never understand how difficult it is to please legions of fans, labels, and the whole world. As he cries and yells, it’s hard not to find yourself thinking that, sure, fame must be very hard. But how hard would it have been to ring Rick up and ask for permission? The movie has little sympathy for Danny’s position.
Rick is, of course, interested in the money that a credit on this song could give him. But the difference between him and Danny is that he’s not really worried about pleasing the world – he mostly wants the peace that Danny admitting his part in the song will bring. He has no video or audio proof that he wrote the song, and the rockiest part of the film is that it even seems like his wife and daughter don’t really believe him (it turns out, they do – but for a time the film tries hard to manipulate you into believing they don’t, and that feels more than a little clunky).
Even with these rocky moments, the film’s core ideas – that artistic integrity and success isn’t necessarily measured in dollars, that knowing the truth (even if no one else does) can set you free – shines through. And “Power Ballad” never equivocates on the fact that all the success in the world can’t shield Danny from what he’s done. In a moment toward the film’s end, you think Carney might offer Danny a bit of redemption, and maybe a lesser film would have devolved into something a little more treacly and overly sentimental. But “Power Ballad,” despite its faults, stays true to its melody.
“Power Ballad” opens in theaters this weekend.
