Once

Power Ballad

31/05/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Since his 2006 breakthrough, Once, Irish director John Carney has concentrated his attention on films about musicians – and, as you’ll no doubt have guessed from its title, Power Ballad is no exception. I’m pretty sure this is his first attempt to deal with the subject of intellectual copyright though. And if that sounds dull, don’t be misled. For my money, this sparky, enjoyable drama might be Carney’s best offering yet.

Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is a former member of an influential band. Back down the years, he swapped his dreams of stardom for marriage and fatherhood. He’s living happily with Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) and their teenage daughter, Aja (Beth Fallon), in the suburbs of Dublin. To earn a crust, Rick fronts a band called Bride and Groove, who specialise in playing weddings, covering all the usual hits. Occasionally (and much to the chagrin of his fellow band members), he throws in one of his own compositions, with predictably dancefloor-clearing results.

When the band picks up a gig at a swanky hotel, one of the wedding guests turns out to be Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former member of a chart-busting boy band, now trying to find his way as a solo artist. Danny joins the band on stage for a Stevie Wonder song and Rick and Danny appear to have an easy rapport. After the gig, they hang out together, drinking whiskey, smoking spliffs and exchanging ideas. 

Rick plays Danny one of his old compositions, How To Write a Song Without You, which Danny seems to take an instant shine to.

Six months later, Rick is walking through a shopping mall when he hears a very familiar melody playing on the tannoy. It turns out that Danny has recorded Rick’s song as his new single and it’s on track to be a massive number one hit… but there’s no mention of Rick’s involvement.

Anyone who has played in a band will identify with Rick’s resulting anguish. His song has been appropriated but he has no proof that it’s his original composition. When he tells people about it, a lot of them (even his friends) think he’s fantasising. His inability to obtain the recognition he deserves sends him into a spiral of frustration that threatens to destroy everything he has – including his relationship with his daughter.

Rudd is always an appealing performer and he’s terrific in the lead role, performing his own vocals and looking every inch a musician, while Jonas (a genuine former boy band member) does a great job of portraying Danny’s conflicted emotions, his inability to own up to what he has done. Keith McErlean is impressive as Kyle, Danny’s ruthless American manager, and I also love Peter McDonald’s performance as Sandy, Rick’s supportive best friend, ready to back his mate up no matter what happens – even if it means hopping on a flight to Los Angeles to take the bull by the horns.

Power Ballad is perfectly pitched and manages to keep its conclusion tantalisingly unresolved until almost the final shot. If you don’t come out of this with an earworm for that central song, then there’s frankly no hope for you.

4.7 stars

Philip Caveney

Sing Street

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22/05/16

Films about pop music are notoriously hard to do; many directors have fallen by the wayside when trying to put such a concept together, but John Carney has already pulled it off twice, first with the delightful (and appropriately named), Once, and more recently with the criminally underrated Begin Again. So can he really hope to do it a third time?

The answer is, unreservedly, yes. Sing Street just might be his finest effort to date, even though the setting, theme (and one particular member of the cast) will inevitably draw comparisons with The Commitments.

In 1980s Dublin, troubled teenager Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) finds himself withdrawn from his private school and thrown upon the tender mercies of the Christian Brothers, on nearby Synge Street, after his parents’ relationship begins to fall apart and the family fortunes are hit by the deepening recession. At the new school, Cosmo experiences bullying at the hands of some of the older kids and more upsettingly, by the obnoxious Brother Baxter (Don Wycherly) who rules the place with an iron cassock. However, a chance encounter with the enigmatic Raphina (Lucy Boynton) gives Cosmo some new purpose in life, when he impulsively invites her to appear in a video for ‘his band.’ One small problem there – he doesn’t actually have a band yet – so, without further ado, he seeks out interested parties from around the neighbourhood and they set about rehearsing the songs that Cosmo has written in his bedroom.

Anybody who has ever played in a teenage pop band is going to relate to this, but then again, so are a lot of people, because this is heart-warming stuff about youth and ambition that pretty much anybody can enjoy. What Carney does better than just about anyone else is to follow the creation of a song through from those first amateurish noodlings, to the finished product, making it all seem wholly credible and entirely uplifting. Even Cosmo’s imagined Back To The Future fantasy works an absolute treat.

There’s a fabulous running joke, which has Cosmo and his band listening to the latest pop sensation, only to end up dressing exactly like them in the following scene, while the original songs written by Carney, Gary Clark and Adam Levine are catchy, but simple enough to make you believe that they actually could have been written by a teenager. There’s also a wonderful relationship between Cosmo and his older brother, University dropout Brendan (Jack Reynor) which goes to the very heart of the story.

Whatever you do, find time to go and see this charming film – it’s an absolute corker.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Begin Again

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13/07/14

Writer/director John Carney is, of course, the man who created the phenomenon that is Once. Begin Again, is basically a better-heeled version of the same story. Man meets woman, they make a record together, the lyrics of the songs reflect on the story.

So, not exactly a stellar jump for Carney but one that nonetheless has charms of its own. Mark Ruffalo is Dan, an independent record producer who’s career has taken a nosedive after the breakup of his marriage to Miriam (Catherine Keener). One night, drunk in a club, he witnesses a song by singer/songwriter Greta (Keira Knightly) and decides he wants to make an album with her. But she too is damaged goods, having recently been dumped by her partner, Dave (Adam Levine) a self-centred musician currently making a meteoric breakthrough into the big time. Against all the odds, Dan and Greta manage to record their record live on the streets of New York…

OK, leaving aside the sheer impossibility of actually doing that, this is an entertaining movie that demonstrates a real understanding of the current music industry. Knightly makes more than a decent fist of performing the songs (anyone who saw her in the Edge of Love will already know that she can carry a tune) and the ‘will they. won’t they?’ relationship with Ruffalo cooks up some fair chemistry. The scene where Ruffalo visualises the production he’s going to do of Greta’s song is fabulous and probably worth the price of admission alone. This is a entertaining film, but next time out, Carney is definitely going to have to spread his net a little wider.

4.2 stars

Philip Caveney