An American wedding singer based in Dublin faces an existential crisis after his personal song is nicked by a burgeoning L.A. pop star in Power Ballad, which premiered at this year’s Dublin International Film Festival and opens in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. Backed by an endearing Paul Rudd in a role that plays perfectly to his strengths, this latest film from Once director John Carney is his best since that 2008 Oscar winner, and a real crowd-pleaser that ought to earn him another Academy Award nomination for the powerful central tune at its heart.
Power Ballad stars Rudd as Rick Power, a former aspiring rock musician who traded dreams of stardom for a quieter life in Ireland, where he now fronts a wedding band, lives with his Irish wife Rachel (Marcella Plunkett), and dotes on teenage daughter Aja (Beth Fallon). At a lavish wedding gig, Rick strikes up an unlikely friendship with Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former boy-band sensation struggling to launch a solo career. After a night of drinking, jamming, and sharing songs, Rick plays Danny an original composition called How to Write a Song (Without You). Months later, Rick hears it blasting from a shopping mall speaker system as Danny’s chart-topping comeback single.
The setup is deceptively simple, and Carney understands exactly why it works. We love to root for the underdog taking on the system, and Power Ballad hits all the right beats. Rick is not fighting one villain but an entire music industry apparatus that has little interest in hearing his side of the story. The song becomes a global hit, Danny becomes a superstar, and Rick is left with nothing but the certainty that he wrote it. Rudd makes him immensely sympathetic throughout, conveying both the frustration of being robbed and the embarrassment of sounding unhinged as nobody around him fully believes his claim.
What elevates Power Ballad above a conventional crowd-pleasing comedy-drama is the deeper emotional territory it explores beneath that premise. Even Rick’s friends and family, while supportive, can’t actually confirm his story. Nobody remembers hearing the song before Danny recorded it. There is no demo tape, no email, no evidence. The possibility hangs in the air that Rick may be chasing something he can never prove. As the film progresses, it becomes less about receiving recognition and more about learning to live without it.
Carney builds toward a wonderfully affecting realization: Rick may never defeat the machinery stacked against him, but that doesn’t mean the song has been taken away from him. It still belongs to him because of what inspired it and what it represents. The film’s climactic emotional beat lands not because Rick finally wins, but because he finds peace. It’s an unusually mature and moving conclusion for a story that could have easily settled for courtroom victories or public humiliation. Instead, Power Ballad finds something more meaningful to say about art, ownership, and personal fulfillment.
Just as importantly, Danny is never reduced to a cartoon villain. Jonas gives a surprisingly subtle performance as a musician whose theft is undeniable but whose guilt is impossible to ignore. Carney carefully depicts the weight of Danny’s decision throughout the film; the screenplay refuses to let him off the hook, but it also allows us to understand the situation he now finds himself in. A climactic concert sequence becomes surprisingly affecting because we know exactly what Danny is thinking throughout it.
Peter McDonald, who also co-wrote the screenplay with the director, has memorable supporting turn as Sandy, Rick’s loyal friend and bandmate who accompanies him to Los Angeles for an increasingly quixotic confrontation with Danny. Jack Reynor relishes every moment as Danny’s ruthless manager Mac, an unapologetically cynical music-industry shark we love to hate.
As with all of Carney’s films, music is ultimately the star of the show. Watching Rudd and Jonas perform everything from Stevie Wonder’s I Wish to Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town and Go West’s Don’t Look Down is an enormous pleasure, and Carney has a wonderful understanding of how music functions dramatically within a film. Songs don’t merely punctuate scenes here; they become extensions of character and storytelling.
The standout is the original central tune How to Write a Song (Without You), written by Carney and longtime collaborator Gary Clark (formerly of Scottish pop band Danny Wilson, also the namesake of the Jonas character). Performed repeatedly throughout the film in different arrangements and emotional contexts, the song evolves alongside the narrative until it becomes impossible to separate from Rick’s journey.
It’s a genuine earworm elevated by emotional resonance, much like Falling Slowly was in Once. Carney even sneaks in a brief nod to that earlier film through a busker performance of the Oscar-winning tune, a welcome reminder of the filmmaker’s most celebrated work; for local audiences, that connection carries added significance given Once‘s star-making turn from Czech singer-songwriter Markéta Irglová.
Cinematographer Yaron Orbach, who also shot Carney’s Sing Street and Begin Again, captures both Dublin and Los Angeles with warmth and authenticity while emphasizing the contrast between the two worlds Rick inhabits. The film is particularly effective in depicting the experience of an American who has genuinely built a life abroad. While many movies use expatriate characters as fish-out-of-water comic devices, Power Ballad captures the day-to-day realities of cultural adaptation, marriage, family, and belonging with unusual specificity and affection.
Like the best of Carney’s work, Power Ballad understands that music matters not because it creates fame but because it holds meaning on a deeper level. Anchored by a wonderfully likable performance from Rudd, enriched by a surprisingly nuanced turn from Jonas, and built around one of the year’s best original songs, it’s a warm, funny, heartfelt crowd-pleaser that earns every emotional payoff, including a finale likely to bring tears to your eyes.
