Low Key
Seriously, is the lighter/phone to the air still a thing?
Power Ballad
Director: John Carney • Writers: John Carney, Peter McDonald
Starring: Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Peter McDonald, Jack Reynor
Ireland / USA • 1hr 39mins
Opens Hong Kong June 25 • IIB
Grade: B
Irish director John Carney really is a one-note filmmaker, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. He’s probably still best know for his breakout musical romance (not musical musical) Once, back in 2007, about a pair of Dublin buskers who fall in love and make us all listen to “Falling Slowly” for, like, nine years. Since then he’s really honed his music movie skills and become the go-to guy for a film that’s got a lot of music but that doesn’t feel like the West End or Broadway. After Once came Begin Again (2014), in which Keira Knightly was a not-very-stage-savvy songwriter who a washed up record exec saw as his ticket to a comeback. Then in 2016 Sing Street, far and away Carney’s best, had a bunch of 1980s Dublin council housing kids aiming for pop stardom and mostly failing. There are threads that tie these together, of course, and that’s the general dickishness of the music industry and the habit of the powerful to steal shit from the less powerful.
Carney’s latest is Power Ballad, and no. Sadly there isn’t an aural appearance by anything as transcendent and lighter-inducing as “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (breath out) or “Sister Christian” (because we are, in fact, motoring). The ballad of the title is a song by failed (uh huh) rock star turned wedding band performer Rick Power (Paul Rudd), who after a gig one night winds up hanging out with a friend of the groom, superstar Harry Styles-ish former boy bander Danny Wilson (former boy bander Nick Jonas, putting his gay baiting days of Kingdom behind him). They drink way too much whisky, smoke way too much weed, and have a great night talking music, writing, jamming and baring their masculine souls to each other. Desperately in need of a hit for his stalled career Danny steals a song Rick’s been working over for years: “How to Write a Song (Without You)”. Massive hit. Glorious comeback. No credit for Rick. And that’s when the movie really starts.
Love you, bruh
Which, essentially, is about honesty, integrity, the eternal power of a great song and getting crushed beneath the grinding wheels of life. Rick was on his way to rock stardom but dropped it all after meeting Rachel (Carney regular Marcella Plunkett) while on tour in Ireland. He stayed in Dublin, they got married and had a daughter, Aja (Beth Fallon), and he went on to become a wedding band singer (of Rudd that should be “singer”) with The Bride and Groove, which includes ex-con bestie Sandy (co-writer Peter McDonald) and running-out-of-patience drummer Binzer (Rory Keenan). Naturally, when Rick finally hears his song coming from Danny’s mouth and racking up 500,000 views and likes on whatever-the-fuck in a few days and getting all the kudos for it, he digs Danny’s card out and calls his management. He wants a co-writer credit, it could change his life. The road block in Rick’s looming success is that analogue guy that he is, he has no proof he wrote it, no recording of the song at any stage of its development. And without that proof no one believes him, and Danny’s deliciously hard ball manager Mac (Jack Reynor, always welcome) has all the power to constantly hang up on him and issue various cease and desist orders.
The film does backflips in order to line up its mostly happy ending and to it’s credit, Power Ballad never goes over the top in its statements. Rick’s “sacrifices” aren’t soul-crushing, and he is genuinely fine with his choices; his triumphs in the end are modest. It keeps the film acerbic and painfully realist when it needs to be and sprinkles just enough humour and Carney optimism on it to make it, erm, sing.
You’ll get a lot of mileage out of Power Ballad if you consider yourself a Rudd fan; I am not, and he’s not entirely convincing as a regret-filled, middle-aged pseudo-Springsteen (sorry, not even close, pal) who can’t – or won’t – let the fantasy die. McDonald does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to giving Rick a personality, as if by osmosis he becomes more interesting, and strangely Rudd and Jonas do have a nice back-and-forth as two wasted dudes have a carefree moment to indulge themselves. That extended act one capper has a warm, earthy visual language in an otherwise Netflix one that all but embraces Rick and Danny when they’re at their most authentic. Which is what makes it such a letdown that Jonas, while a pleasant enough presence and totally capable of pulling off rock star swagger (“Close” is still a banger) outside the wedding night, can’t quite make Danny’s inner conflict over swiping Rick’s tune feel real if it exists, or shameless if it doesn’t. It doesn’t help that the script runs him through the motions of Entitled And Untalented Exploiter. The narrative hints at that inner conflict that butts up against industry demands that make Danny feel as if he’s been backed into a corner, but never really does more than that. The rest of the mileage will come from the central song, which doesn’t come close to the catchy, stadium earworm status of Begin Again’s “Lost Stars” or even Sing Street’s “Drive it Like You Stole It”. There’s a graceful summary of how and why we read and respond to music, each of us individually in Rick and Danny’s last meeting, but after that the song vanishes into the ether. Or maybe not, depending on your preferred balladry type. Personally if there’s no steel horse involved, it’s just a plain ol’ ballad. No power. Hard pass.