Power Ballad

Grade: A

I love movies that inspire. Tuner, out last week, reminded me of an old passing ambition I had: becoming a piano tuner. Power Ballad lit a fire under me to create again, musically. My last album has been the baby in the family for too long. I also love it when I find cinematic bookends in the same year. Tuner and Power Ballad complement each other. They even share a cast member (Havana Rose Liu). It will make sense in many ways to hear that Power Ballad’s writer/director, John Carney, also made Once. He is obviously passionate about music, and in both films, he uses it as a backdrop for life.

Paul Rudd plays Rick, the lead singer for a wedding band called The Bride and Groove. They travel around Ireland, where they’re based, playing modest venues. One night, a former boy band star is in attendance, as he is a friend of the wedding party. He is Danny (Nick Jonas), who is obviously still doing quite well, as we will later see from his hotel accommodations, equipment, home, lawyers, and entourage. He goes up on stage to sing a song with The Bride and Groove. When spotting Rick taking a walk through the courtyard afterwards, Danny invites him to his suite for some drinks and a jam session.

This sequence is just right, perfectly capturing what it’s like when two talented musicians with good ears put their musical heads together. Observe the way Rudd moves a capo around and figures out chords to follow along with Jonas – and likewise, when Jonas sits at the piano and figures out progressions on the fly when Rudd presents an incomplete song idea on guitar. Every moment feels organic and rings true.

The song in question is one that has been bouncing around Rick’s head for years. He has been stuck on it, never being able to finish. Cut to six months later, when Rick hears something familiar wafting from an airport’s PA system. A significant chunk of it is Rick’s song that he played for Danny that night. It has been released as “How to Write a Song (Without You),” and it’s about to be Danny’s biggest hit ever.

This is a situation like the “Flaming Moe” episode of The Simpsons, where Homer invented a drink, and the local bartender took the idea and all the credit. I love the way Carney plays with juxtaposition with his camera work, to signify the vast difference in lifestyles. In a phone call between Rick and Danny’s lawyer, we jump back and forth between an office on a high floor of a building in beautiful sunny Los Angeles to Rick’s small suburban house in overcast Ireland. Rick initially wants a writing credit and a portion of the sales. Unfortunately for him, there’s no proof that the song came from his head, and pre-dates Danny’s single. He has come up empty after scouring his devices and hard drives.

There’s an uncomfortable scene to watch, where Rick gets into a physical confrontation with his band right in the middle of a wedding reception. In his defense, he was feeling some kind of way when a guest started goading him into playing “the new Danny Wilson song” and the band was trying to tell him “just do it” – but still. This is before the car accident that resulted from Rick trying to change the station when it came on the radio. Fired from the band, asked by his wife to temporarily stay somewhere else, Rick still wants to find Danny again – even if it’s just so he can admit to Rick that the song is Rick’s, and that Danny could never write something like that.

He flies to LA, which begins my least favorite chapter – but even this act had moments I liked. Comedy creeps in with a bit that looks like Rick and someone else are about to take a massive, death-defying leap off a cliff – only to see that it’s roughly 10 feet down, and they’re perfectly fine. Otherwise, the dialogue has too many interruptions. Danny starts to say something, which might have been some of the most interesting lines in the film, only to be cut off in favor of other set pieces. It’s intriguing to see Rudd play out a scenario that is on the opposite side of where his character in Friendship was. The shoe is on the other foot.

Rudd puts on a great performance, and is a talented singer/guitarist. However, it was Jonas who impressed me the most. Watch his face when it’s first brought to his attention that his team got a call from some guy in Ireland claiming he actually wrote the new song. He tries to laugh it off, but you can see he knows it’s true. In a later scene, he suggests, out of the blue, cutting that guy a check. On the other hand, everything has been “stolen” in some form. Songs come out all the time that sound like other songs – and chances are, whoever came up with the idea they got it from was inspired by something they heard. Where do you draw the line with intellectual property?

The plane appeared to be landing a certain way by the end. It could have ended that way, and I don’t think anyone would have objected – but it has one last twist up its sleeve. What happens after that discovery signifies just enough without spoon-feeding anything or being too vague. What a magical movie Power Ballad is. It will awaken and invigorate your love for music. Every viewer will get something different from it, but it will invite conversations and discussions, which is what all truly great art does. It continues after you’ve consumed the thing. And you will walk out humming that song for a while.

Grade: A