Power Ballad: Movie Review

Cast: Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Havana Rose Liu, Jack Reynor, Peter McDonald
Director: John Carney

Director John Carney has always had music in his blood - and in his sights.

From 2007's smash hit Once about a busker who falls in love to 2013's Begin Again, the music industry's always been part of his writing. So it is with Power Ballad, a crowd-pleasing comedy that sets its sights on the corporatisation of music theft and also the melancholy that afflicts men in their lives.

A genial Paul Rudd is washed-up American singer Rick Power, a wedding singer in band The Bride and Groove. Delegated to performing covers for happy couples and with years on the road with the band, he's put aside his dreams of a rockstar life and pursuing that one true song for a life with his wife and daughter.

During a gig, he's asked to allow former boyband singer Danny Wilson (singer Nick Jonas, not really playing against type) to sing on stage with him. The pair bond and in a late-night jam session afterwards, they swap musical notes and songs.

Six months later, Danny has launched a solo career with a worldwide smash hit and basking in the glow of breaking out of his boyband past - but the only thing is it's with Rick's song. Depressed and desperate to prove that he deserves a co-credit, Rick goes against the advice of his family and heads to the US to track down Danny to get what's his.

Power Ballad is nothing short of a crowd-pleaser that hits the right note on all sides.

With wry observations about men getting older (needing to put on glasses to look at small print) and tapping into the maudlin ethos of what could have been, Power Ballad has some very on-the-nose observations to make about men of a certain age and how they act. 

But more than that, it also raises the issue of copyright theft and giving people what they're owed. However, Carney's canny enough to wrap all of this up in a film that never loses any of its warmth or heart as it plays out.

It helps that Rudd is as affable as ever and while Jonas doesn't really rise above his own musical stylings, there's a thread of a feeling that he's trying to get his character to grapple with doing the right thing.

Power Ballad may lack the rawness of Once, but in making something that has such wide comedic appeal while not sidelining any of the wry moments that light up the screen, it emerges as unmissable fare.