Review of Power Ballad – Nick Jonas and Paul Rudd star in the horror comedy about bromance and betrayal | Video

OhOnce again, Irish writer-director John Carney delivers the joy of aspartame with this dark comedy of bromance and betrayal in the world of music, starring Nick Jonas (from the Jonas Brothers) as Danny Wilson, a well-known teenager who is trying to go it alone and search for a single. Paul Rudd as Rick Power, a washed-up wedding singer who just sings Danny a fun song he’s been working on.

Power Ballad is about making it and dreaming big, about every man who never gives up on the hope of one day being great. But as is often the case with Carney, it’s about something else, which is often left unacknowledged in movies about music or any kind of business: extreme success and failure. For every star there is an invisible army of losers, sad cases who were once star town friends or early allies and have a long career ahead of them to come to terms with not making it. In the bitter words of Les McQueenguitarist of failed 70s band Crème Brulee on TV’s The League of Gentlemen: “It’s a bad business…”

Rudd’s Rick is a lovable American who used to be in a 90s US rock band, and Carney sticks to the analog dialogue of Rudd looking young back in the day with long hair, eyeliner and a Bill Hicks T-shirt. Not that this Dorian Gray actor needs any kind of trickery. But Rick fell in love with a beautiful Irish woman Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) while playing in Dublin, lived with her in Ireland, and now has a young daughter named Aja (Beth Fallon) who is the apple of his eye; he tells her that girls are no longer interested in “love” in music, it’s actually “revenge”. An interesting sign.

Rick has stopped playing the big covers in the wedding band, but he is secretly tormented and regrets that he messed up his career. One night, they are playing a wedding reception at a luxury country hotel and Rick ignores the fact that Danny Wilson is one of the guests; but he can’t help but be attracted to the beta male’s submission when Danny asks to join him on stage and breaks the mold of Stevie Wonder’s I Want To. Poor Rick hangs out with Danny later in his living room, drinking, smoking weed and jamming, and he plays Danny a sweet song that he’s proud of and enjoys. It’s a great moment, Rick is dejected while shopping, hearing a classic pop song blaring through a shopping mall, filled with LA trees; Rudd subtly conveys Rick’s fear that he is imagining things, and then his painful realization.

Only Carney, a master of music video, could have created a long scene showing Danny and Rick skillfully talking and working on the song and he stayed with the scene for a surprisingly long time, focusing on the production. Richard Curtis would have sent it in 45 seconds – although that reminded me a bit Curtis Yesterday’s romantic and sarcastic comedyof ordinary dope in another universe that transcends Beatles music as its own. In Power Ballad, masculinity is sweetly redeemed.