Power Ballad (2026) – Charming

Released: 28th May
Seen: 8th September

It’s an undeniable truth that all music artists are influenced by other artists. All boy bands want to be The Beatles, all male artists are trying to steal some of Elvis’ swagger (and Elvis was just stealing from any black musician he knew of) and pretty much any modern female pop artist wants to be Madonna. It’s not hard to spot this, the entire music industry is built on people who are influenced by other artists and trying to express that influence in a way that doesn’t get them sued for copyright infringement. This is why you’ll see a lot of strange people getting writing credits on major songs, it’s weird that Right Said Fred are credited on a Taylor Swift song but she used the beat of their song I’m Too Sexy in her song Look What You Made Me Do so she has to give them credit… but what if she didn’t? What if a major artist just took a song from a struggling, lesser-known artist and just never gave them credit? Well, that would be the basic plot to the movie Power Ballad which has got its moments, but not as many as it should.

Power Ballad largely focuses on Rick Power (Paul Rudd), a wedding singer who largely just performs famous covers at the events he’s performing at while occasionally slipping an original song in there, much to the annoyance of the people he’s performing for. At one of these weddings, Rick gets introduced to a former Boy Band member turned solo artist Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas) and after a rousing duet of I Wish by Stevie Wonder, the two of them hang out and get to know each other a little and work on a few of Danny’s songs for his upcoming album. During this process, Rick shows off a song that he wrote called “How to Write a Song Without You” and a few days later, shock and horror, Danny has stolen the song and released it as a single which immediately becomes a massive hit. Without the credit, Rick gets nothing so he begins trying to convince Danny’s manager to get Danny to admit to stealing the song and give him credit and in doing so he starts slowly pushing people away while Danny just enjoys being famous and has nothing really bad happen to him at any point. 

Plotline-wise, Power Ballad is fine enough, but it doesn’t really go that far with the idea. Most of the film is just Rick being kind of annoyed that he’s not getting credit and making a few calls to try and get noticed but that’s it, any attempt to actually confront Danny is saved for maybe one scene in the final act and it’s kind of brushed past. The actual core idea is genuinely great, it talks about who owns certain ideas and what certain pieces of art can mean to certain people (The reveal of what the song really means to Rick is actually quite touching, in theory) and when Power Ballad starts to dive into the complex topic of getting recognised for your work, it can be interesting but it doesn’t go far enough with it. It’s like the film just kind of keeps the main pair apart and spends so much time focused on Rick being annoyed about not getting credit that it forgets that there’s another major character in this film and forgets to do anything to try and get our hero justice right up until the final minute.

Where Power Ballad works absolutely without a single issue is any scene where Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas are sharing a scene together. The two of them have such an undeniable chemistry that makes the scenes of them absolutely stellar. Their performance, their banter, any time the two of them are together you can see why this movie exists because it’s undeniably charming. Even when they have the big climactic fight there’s just such a natural back-and-forth between them and their specific skill sets are well utilised. Paul manages to carry the emotion and comedy while Nick sings his fucking face off and sells the cool rockstar vibe the film needs to work. The downside is there are maybe two scenes where they’re even in the same location and without them together the film loses a lot of its magic. They’re still charming enough on their own to help make things watchable, but that special something that their scenes together share just isn’t there for most of the film.

Then there’s the actual music and honestly, most of the songs are fine. The covers of classic songs that’re in this movie are well performed, Paul Rudd’s a surprisingly good singer who really gives off strong Wedding Singer vibes when he performs and letting Nick Jonas put his boyband credibility behind a couple of covers (largely the I Wish song mentioned earlier) is a good choice but the music falters when it comes to anything original, specifically the song at the centre of this entire battle… It’s kind of basic, if we’re being honest. It’s not anything interesting, it doesn’t show off any particular skills from either performer and there’s nothing about it that’s actually catchy. For a song that creates this kind of reaction you need it to be something like Shallow from A Star Is Born, that song took over the world for a good reason and had everything going for it but it almost entirely relied on that section where Lady Gaga just belted out her vocal range in one long riff. That’s a song you fight over, “How to Write a Song Without You” is a song you send a strongly worded email over if you find the time. Even when the song is placed in the hands of Nick Jonas it barely works, it has no swagger or warmth, there’s nothing to latch onto. Sure, it’s a song written specifically for a film meant to resemble a cheesy pop ballad but it should at least be a good cheesy pop ballad. As it was, I kept thinking “This feels like How Am I Supposed To Live Without You without the power of Michael Bolton’s voice” and if you make me think that Michael Bolton could do the song better, you’ve made a terrible mistake.

It also doesn’t really help that none of the side characters are that interesting, I haven’t named any of them and I don’t plan on doing so because who cares? One of them is just the writer forcing himself into the film for no particular reason and it’s very distracting, the manager character is maybe the closest to being interesting but ends up just kind of being forgettable and Rick’s wife and daughter are effectively props that signify that Rick’s getting too obsessive. This is especially wild because the emotional peak of the movie should be revolving around the daughter, but she’s such a non-entity in the film that I genuinely forgot she was in it when the time came for her to do something important at the end (oh, the ending is also bad but in a way that would spoil the movie if I described it so let’s just say this all wraps up way too neatly to be worthwhile).

Power Ballad leans so hard on the charm of its leads that it basically forgets everything else. On the one hand, that’s probably great because the leads are so enjoyable that I’d watch them sit around folding laundry but everything else feels half-assed. The songs aren’t memorable, the drama isn’t interesting, any comedy feels forgettable and there is really nothing to latch onto. They sold us on a film about a guy getting revenge for his stolen song but just give us “Guy writes a song and is mildly irritating about it for a few hours”. They couldn’t even give us the decency of making the song at the centre of this good enough to care about, it just feels like a missed opportunity on so many levels.