Regardless of status, unsatisfied ambition makes all creatives neighbors. And Rick and Danny hit it off fast by rocking the wedding party and then jamming far better into the wee small hours of the morning in Danny’s palatial suite. It’s there that Rick also shares with Danny a few bars of half-written songs he’s never finished. It’s a good time. Danny even abridges a few of the tunes. Yet groovy memories fade fast fast six months later when Rick hears one of those ditties fully produced, finished, and blowing the minds of everyone at a nearby shopping town in his Irish hometown.
By this time, even his teenage daughter Aja (Beth Fallon) knows all the words to the old school ballad climbing the charts. What Aja, wife Rachel (Marcella Plunkett), and even best friend bandmate Sandy (Peter McDonald) cannot so easily recall though is that “How to Write a Song (Without You)” is one of the countless melodies Rick has been noodling on for years. But the American expat does carry on a little like ol’ raving Ben Gunn when he insists it’s his song, despite the rejuvenated Danny Boy claiming sole credit back in the States or the new anthem of a generation.
The act of collaboration, particularly in the artistic context, can always be a nebulous thing. Famously Paul McCartney and John Lennon attempted to prevent such debates when they agreed to sign every Beatles tune they worked on as “Lennon-McCartney.” Yet even then, there was a time in 2002 when McCartney tried to have more than a few switched to “McCartney-Lennon” to clarify credit.
Having come, if ever so briefly, from the Irish and U.K. rock scene of the early ‘90s, Carney knows about how late night inspirations and jamming can yield, or deny, credit for tunes potentially worth millions of dollars. Does adding a bridge qualify as songwriting credit? What about the whole chorus and lyrics too? Power Ballad deliberately wades into murky legal waters, but it’s in a clear-eyed search for transparent waters.
This is a movie about warmly and affectionately dealing with an artist’s disappointment, as well as the simpler joys in that lifestyle, especially when they come outside of the studio or medium. While much of this review is dedicated to the core dynamic between Rick and Danny—and the movie gains much from Jonas’ own history with the boy-band-adjacent act he fronted with his brothers—the movie is really about an artist of a certain age taking stock of dreams that were waylaid. Or, in Rick’s case, outright stolen.
Rudd’s hero is justified in being severely aggrieved as he scurries around Dublin telling anybody who will listen how that’s his song. There’s a faintly pitiful poor Job quality to his suffering. He might fancy himself Cassandra, insisting the world is ending, but the only person affected by the catastrophe is Rick. And his family.
