If anyone understands the glories, pitfalls, and perils of the music industry well enough to make a movie (or five) on the subject, it would be John Carney who, prior to his impressive career as a director and screenwriter, was bassist for the long-running Irish rock band The Frames during the early 1990s. Carney first displayed an inclination and aptitude for filmmaking when he directed some of the group’s music videos, and he was definitely paying attention to the machinations of managers, booking agents, and record company suits, as well as the demands of fans, at the time. That awareness is on display in most of Carney’s films, especially his latest motion picture, Power Ballad — a cautionary tale about the creative process, intellectual-property ownership, and the cruelties that one can encounter in the business part of the music business.
After his stint in The Frames, Carney went on to shoot a couple of short films and a well-received low-budget relationship drama and continued on that path by creating a number of other admired movie and TV projects. Eventually, he would attain international acclaim with Once — an evocative mix of music and star-crossed romance that featured Frames lead singer Glen Hansard as a Dublin, Ireland busker in love with a young immigrant singer and pianist played by Markéta Irglová. Once won various major awards, including a 2008 “Best Original Song” Oscar for the utterly romantic “Falling Slowly,” and its momentous success must have encouraged Carney to continue imbuing his films with musical elements and concerns.
Carney followed Once with Begin Again, starring Keira Knightley as a fledgling singer-songwriter and Mark Ruffalo as a floundering record label executive teaming up to record an album on the streets of New York City; Sing Street, a teen coming-of-age rom-com about a wannabe new-wave rocker in 1980s Dublin; and Flora & Son, which depicts a long-distance internet collaboration between two composers played by Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Directed and coscripted by Carney, the recently-released Power Ballad goes to somewhat darker places than those previous offerings. Bolstered by the inescapable good-guy charm of Paul Rudd and the pop-idol appeal of Nick Jonas, it finds humor and conflict in a musical bromance gone sour. Its occasional superficiality aside, it gets a number of things right about cutthroat aspects of the entertainment field, and it doesn’t wrap up quite how you might expect.
A bond abused
Rudd plays Rick Power, an almost-over-the-hill American rocker whose recording career never panned out. He met his future wife Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) while he was touring with his band in Ireland. They married, settled down, and had a daughter named Aja. Years later, Rick, Rachel, and the now-teenaged Aja (Beth Fallon) live a modest life in Dublin, where Rick makes a living as a singer in a wedding band. While playing a posh nuptial gathering at an upscale venue, Rick learns that one of the guests is former boy-band star Danny Wilson, played by Jonas, of course. One thing leads to another — that being a drunken songwriting session. Bonding with Danny in a boozy haze, Rick plays one of his unrecorded tunes: “How to Write a Song (Without You).” They part company, only to have Danny subsequently elevate his previously shaky solo career with the song that Rick wrote, albeit slightly tweaked.
It gets worse for Rick. Danny takes sole credit for writing what becomes a massive hit recording, even telling his diffident girlfriend, Marcia (Havana Rose Liu), that she inspired the number. As the track becomes a sensation and supercharges Danny’s fortunes, Rick spirals at the news. He reaches out to Danny for credit with no luck. Then, Rick tries to convince Danny’s conniving producer Mac (Jack Reynor from Carney’s Sing Street and Flora and Son) of his bona fides as the primary composer of “How to Write a Song (Without You),” and is told to get lost. With no other recourse, Rick decides to take action, aided by his best friend Sandy (Power Ballad coscreenwriter Peter McDonald), the wedding band’s good-natured guitarist. That’s when the struggle between the scrub and the star really ramps up — in an entertaining way.
In the annals of pop music history, there have been numerous instances when songwriting credit has been in dispute, leading to more than a few lawsuits. Some plaintiffs have won, and some have not, contingent on the burden of proof and the whims of the court. With such a scorecard, the outcome of Rick’s quest for restitution is uncertain. Regardless of its denouement, Power Ballad provides a considerable amount of laughs and emotional epiphanies. And the musical performances, including Rudd’s singing, are good enough to sell the legitimacy of what transpires. The same goes for the song that serves as the point of contention between Rick and Danny and truly sounds as if it could top the charts. For the record, “How to Write a Song (Without You)” was cowritten by Carney and Scottish musician Gary Clark who also contributed to the scores of Flora and Son and Sing Street. Power Ballad isn’t Carney’s masterpiece, which may be Once or may be a movie yet to come, but it’s a tuneful crowd-pleaser that doesn’t shy away from how tough it is to survive in a field where talent isn’t always enough to overcome the odds or scheming competitors.
Power Ballad is currently in theaters.
