Paul Rudd’s Power Ballad

One of the grumpiest things about me is that I just do not jive with John Carney’s music-inspired feel-good cinema. Once? Nonce, thank you. Sing Street? Silence beat, please. His latest film, Power Ballad, stars Paul Rudd as a flop wedding singer who writes a song with an ex-boy bander, played by Nick Jonas, and…man, I am trying. I love Paul Rudd, I think he is vastly underrated as an actor, he can sell just about any amount of schmaltz and make it play—the same way he can add layers to smarmy characters—but whew. The John Carney of it all!

The trailer for Power Ballad dropped yesterday, showing Rudd’s character hanging out with Jonas’s character, tooling around with instruments and lyrics and melodies. A song gets written. The boy bander steals it, maybe, probably. There are undoubtedly life lessons to be learned. The real power ballad are the friends we made along the way, or some such.

Maybe part of it, too, is that we don’t really get to hear the power ballad in question, just bits of it, and movies about music live and die by their soundtracks. Sing Street, for instance, while not my bag as a film, has a solid soundtrack. That is the least offensive John Carney film, in my book, in no small part due to the soundtrack. So maybe Power Ballad will soar on the original music in the film. The film comes out on May 29, a classic piece of character-driven summer counterprogramming, we’ll see about the soundtrack then.

I do appreciate John Carney’s devotion to cinema that shows how music weaves in and out of our lives. There are specific songs and albums that I can trace to exact moments on my timeline, melodies that are inextricably tied to times, places, experiences. I don’t even disagree with John Carney’s thesis! I AGREE with him! Music is more than the soundtrack of our lives, it’s our memories recorded in song! But please watch this trailer and tell me if you rolled your eyes a little. It’s the tone that kills me, I think. Like I’m not sure even Paul Rudd can wade through this swamp of smarm.