In Power Ballad, Rudd plays Rick, a gifted singer-songwriter who once fronted a pop band but fell in love with an Irish woman, Rachel (Marcella Plunkett), and abandoned his rock star dreams for a quiet life as a family man in Ireland. There, he\u2019s a loving husband who dotes on his daughter Aja (named after the Steely Dan album?), played by Beth Fallon. He even gets to keep playing music, serving as the lead singer for a top-notch wedding band, where he sings (quite well) all the old classics people want to hear.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s when he absolutely kills a gig at a high-end wedding that he meets Nick Jonas\u2019s Danny, who was once in a boy band and is now struggling with a solo career. After performing together, the two spend the rest of the night drinking and jamming, but when Rick shares a great song he\u2019s been tinkering with for years with Danny, he doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s in for.<\/p>\n
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Power Ballad walks a fine line. In any other movie, Nick Jonas\u2019s Danny would be a villain, callously stealing Rick\u2019s song. But Carney\u2019s movies are more nuanced. While not excusing the act, we see Danny grappling with the notion that his talent isn\u2019t quite as vast as he once thought, and that his career is on the verge of ending if he\u2019s not able to capitalize on his former boy-band fame soon. He deludes himself into thinking what he\u2019s doing isn\u2019t wrong, and Carney never portrays him as wholly unsympathetic. Yet, he also doesn\u2019t excuse how callous Danny becomes once the song is a smash hit, and how he lacks the scruples to admit his wrongdoing, with him easily swayed by his sleazy manager\u2014Carney favorite Jack Reynor as Mac.<\/p>\n
Jonas is well cast in a role that demonstrates his singing ability but also a degree of vulnerability, as you never truly hate Danny. Yet it\u2019s a showstopping movie for Paul Rudd<\/a>, who has one of the best roles of his career as Rick. Rudd is one of the most sympathetic, likeable leading men working, and the fact that he plays Rick as not necessarily vengeful\u2014just bent on getting some kind of acknowledgment\u2014is perfect. But Carney also doesn\u2019t let Rick come off as too idealized, with him succumbing to some bitterness early on when he realizes his song really was good enough to become a phenomenon, but that he\u2019ll never get his moment in the sun. Marcella Plunkett is wonderful as his loyal, loving wife, while Beth Fallon is a find as his daughter.<\/p>\n Best of all, though, is Peter McDonald as Rick\u2019s lifelong sidekick, Sandy, who plays in the wedding band with him and\u2014while a bit of a silly shambles\u2014always has his back. That\u2019s really what you get in a Carney movie: a collection of people who represent the best parts of life rather than the worst. It\u2019s this quality that always makes his movies feel like a breath of fresh air, and the SXSW audience I saw this with ate it up. Hopefully it does well enough that Carney can keep making these movies for a long time\u2014he\u2019s quietly becoming one of the best directors of our era.<\/p>\n \n Subscribe to our weekly newsletter\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/power_ballad_posters_main-1024x538.jpg\")
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