REVIEW: Power Ballad powers through the emotions in great watch

Director John Carney probably isn’t ever going to quite hit the heights of Once a second time.

But, completely different in tone, Power Ballad, 20 years later, is still a hugely enjoyable film which packs quite some poignant punch amid the laughs – the tale of washed-up wedding singer Rick Power (beautifully played by Paul Rudd) and his fateful meeting with downwardly-mobile ex-boy band star Danny (similarly impressive from Nick Jonas).

Rick is going through the motions churning out the hits at an upmarket wedding in Ireland where he has made his home. There he comes across Danny, a friend of the happy couple. When the festivities die down, the two bond over booze and music, sharing song ideas and moving them along with a new energy that comes from their chance encounter before Danny goes back to LA and Rick returns to the wedding circuit.

Fast forward six months and Rick hears, playing in a shopping precinct, Danny’s finished version of a song Rick had shared with him. Worse still, it becomes the massive hit that Danny so needed, clocking up millions of views and completely resurrecting his seemingly-moribund career. Which has exactly the opposite effect on Rick’s trajectory. In his fury he gets kicked out of his band and falls out with his family.

Rudd nails the powerless devastation and the rising indignation. They’d fleetingly been best mates for one night only, and now Danny has done this to him. Why is the huge question. Rick needs to know – and the film pitches itself nicely between the laughs and the fury, the rise and the fall. Rick heads off to LA to confront the man.

It’s utterly absorbing stuff – so much so that you start to wonder if the ending is going to let it all down. But no, it doesn’t. It’s difficult to see where it’s all heading, but when it gets there, again it pitches it all perfectly in director Carney’s examination of the gulf between acting on principle and pondering what actually matters.

Power Ballad is a film which pulls in the big questions and yet never gets bogged down, beautifully played and consistently intriguing. A real gem that you know you will find yourself watching again and again. And again. Superb and with a nice little nod to Once there in the mix…