If you happen to be in the middle of the Venn diagram of people who’ve seen Hokum and Power Ballad this year, there’s a vague lesson forming: Americans travelling to Ireland do so at their own risk. At least in the case of Power Ballad, the new music-centred comedy from Irish director John Carney, the risks presented are primarily of the tangible and mortal kind.

Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is an ageing American rock singer living in Dublin with his Irish wife and their teenage daughter (depending on your taste, the rock part is debatable). Having left behind dreams of arena tours as the lead singer of “Octagon” (they never would have made it), he now makes a living fronting gigging wedding ensemble “Bride and Groove” with his best mate Sandy (Peter McDonald) on lead guitar and a likeable rhythm section of other Dublin musos. B&G are tight and the guests seem entirely satisfied with their 70s and 80s repertoire, but there’s still a gaping chasm between the life Power envisioned for himself as a young man and his current reality. You’ve seen this story before.

One night at the request of a bride, Power agrees to let friend of the groom, semi-washed up boy band vocalist Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas) sit in for a few songs. Danny and Rick hit it off, and after the rest of the attendees shuffle off to bed the two wind up spending the rest of the evening together drunk and stoned workshopping tracks. For Rick it’s a dream come true – the validation of being treated like an equal by someone who has achieved the fame he once coveted. Danny for his part just seems thrilled to hang out with someone with songwriting chops but none of the baggage of success or celebrity. They part on good terms, but when Danny gets back to LA, an unfinished ballad that Rick played him is still knocking around in his head as he struggles to find something with genuine cut-through for his long awaited comeback album.

Six months later Rick hears a familiar tune while out shopping. That’s my song! The only problem: He never finished it and can’t find any proof he ever even played it.

Carney’s career since his breakout with Once in 2006 has been characterised by films where music and stories that verge on mawkish and overly sincere react chemically to produce something with an emotional core capable of winning over a very broad audience. That’s definitely the formula with Power Ballad, and for the most part he has pulled off this trick again, despite some pretty major hurdles.

Rudd has often traded in heightened everyman performances. Charming and handsome but presented as low status. Think I Love You Man or This is 40. He’s in that mode as Rick, but it’s more of a stretch, both because he has to successfully situate his character in this Dublin context, but also because in 2026 it’s just much harder for him to sell being anything other than Paul Rudd. There’s a similar challenge for the film as a whole, which attempts to successfully meld a smaller, more Irish story about a man reckoning with his place as a middle aged Dad who left his rockstar dreams behind, with the more maximalist canvas of Jonas’ world in LA. It has the potential to be too jarring a tonal gap to bridge, and it’s to the credit of Rudd’s commitment to the role and the quality of the script that you end up buying it all just enough for the film to function.

Speaking of Jonas, he’s all in and undeniably charming here. His portrayal of Danny is especially effective during the late night hang and its immediate aftermath, when he’s playing (what one must presume) is closest to himself. The organic and unpremeditated way in which the song thievery comes about is played with a relatability that avoids the character ever going full heel, giving the back half of the film a complexity it otherwise wouldn’t have. It’s a performance that unfortunately can’t quite stand up to the demands of the final act, as the plot elevates towards farce and Jonas forgivably strains to convincingly hit some of the more ridiculous beats asked of him.

That said, it’s a well cast film across the board. Key to the film’s emotional heart are the strong performances from Marcella Plunkett as Rick’s wife Rachel and Beth Fallon as their daughter Aja, and McDonald as Sandy.

And what of the song in dispute? Well it’s essentially an Ed Sheeran ballad, but it has the rare quality of a pop song written for a film that actually sounds like it would exist in the real world, and a second tick for still being bearable after numerous repeat performances across the runtime. And in line with his general modus operandi, Carney manages to make a virtue of its sappiness through the way he weaves Power’s reasons for writing it into the narrative.

Ultimately the inherent earnestness will still put some off, and it also doesn’t land every aspect of its climactic confrontation. But it’s hard to deny the charm of a film that puts this level of ambition into story that, at its core, is about life’s humiliations and injustices paling in comparison to really, really loving your wife and daughter.

 

Power Ballad opens tomorrow in Australian cinemas.