Director – John Carney – 2025 – Ireland – Cert. 15 – 98m
*****
A rock musician reduced to playing weddings but happy with his lot meets a former boy band star and subsequently finds a song he’s been working on for years has been stolen – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 29th
High heeled feet head for the dance floor. “Cel – e – brate Good Times – Come On.” The happy couple are enjoying themselves. You seem like a good crowd, says the frontman Rick (Paul Rudd from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears, 2023; Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jason Reitman, 2021; Ant-man, Peyton Reed, 2015), of the standards band (Rory Keenan from The Guard, John Michael McDonagh, 2011; Ella Enchanted, Tommy O’Haver, 2004; Reign of Fire, Rob Bowman, 2002; Keith McErlean from Flora and Son, 2023, Sing Street, 2016, both John Carney; Paul Reid from Flora and Son). Here’s a song from my last album.
In Rick’s mind, he and his band are on a night stage at a music festival playing to a vast, enthusiastic and indeed magical crowd holding smartphone torch lights. The wedding party don’t share his enthusiasm, however, and the floor is clearing as he inadvertently brings the evening to an end. In The Bride and Groove’s transit van, his band leader tells him, people want the familiar songs, don’t do this again. I’m this close to firing you.
For The Bride and Groove’s next wedding gig – at an lavish country house where their “ensuite” accommodation turns out to be a much cheaper room further down the estate with a loo behind a door – there are rumours that Danny Wilson, an old friend of the couple, will be attending. As a member of a formerly hugely successful boy band, Danny is all over social media, but his career appears to have hit a brick wall since he just can’t find the right material to launch himself as a solo artist.
At the gig that evening, the happy couple get Danny (Nick Jonas from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jake Kasdan, 2017; Jonas, TV series, 2009-10; Night at the Museum 2, Shawn Levy, 2009) onto the stage with the band for an enthusiastic rendition of the next item on their set list, Stevie Wonder’s I Wish. Rick feels good about it, and apparently Danny feels the same, welcoming him into his large hotel room in the actual house which turns out to be only a small part of his suite. Danny plays Rick a song he’s working on; Rick makes some suggestions which help Danny through his creative block, Then Rick plays Danny a song with the working title How to Write a Song which he’s been trying to complete for years and which contains the line “every song I ever wrote… is for you” and Danny similarly comes up with a solution.
You can imagine the pair of them working together something like Hall and Oates (an act referenced in the film by the song Man Eater), but this is not that movie. They part amicably, with Danny giving Rick his card with the contact details of his manager Mac and telling him to look him up if he’s ever in L.A. As Rick staggers back in the morning to the cheap room as the rest of the band are getting in to the van, the girl who runs the premises hands Rick a guitar from Danny that Rick was admiring and playing in Danny’s suite. All in all, a night to remember.
Actually, Rick is not quite the washed up star you might imagine; 20 years ago on tour, he met Rachel (Marcella Plunkett from Flora and Son; Sing Street; Once, 2006; all John Carney) and made the conscious decision to leave the band and set up house with her. They still adore each other, and now have a teenage daughter Aja (Beth Fallon from Louise Lives Large, TV series, 2024). Like the children of musicians everywhere, Aja tolerates rather than admires her dad’s music. Still, they’re a happy family and even if his current musical career isn’t quite what he’d wish it to be, Rick thinks marrying Rachel is the best thing he ever did. He has no regrets and is, essentially, happy with his lot.
Six months later, he’s in a mall shocked at the price of trainers when he hears on the P.A. system How to Write a Song – Danny’s comeback song. Rick is understandably outraged at the theft of his work. Resolving this should be a simple matter of finding the file on his computer that would prove that he wrote 80% of the thing. Except that he can’t find the file. Because he never completed the song, it seems he never recorded it. In which eventuality, lawyers tell him when he consults them, he has no case.
That doesn’t stop Rick trying to call Danny and leaving messages explaining the situation, but Rick can’t seem to get past Danny’s front office. Danny, meanwhile, is conflicted about the whole thing, not least because he drank a lot of alcohol that night and genuinely can’t remember much about it. He initially played How to Write a Song to his girlfriend Marcia (Havana Rose Liu from Tuner, Danial Roher, 2025; Lurker, Alex Russell, 2025) claiming he wrote it for her. His manager Mac (Jack Reynor from Flora and Son; Midsommar, Ari Aster, 2019; Sing Street; A Royal Night Out, Julian Jarrold, 2015) comes down hard on Rick in an unexpected phone call, threatening dire consequences if Rick doesn’t cease and desist.
So, enlisting the help of The Bride and Groove’s notoriously fiery-tempered roadie Sandy (co-screenwriter Peter McDonald from The Batman, 2022; Fanny Lye Deliver’d, 2019; The Damned United, 2009; Some Voices, 2000), Rick heads for L.A. to sort it out, finding himself in the otherwise female audience at a gig where they are all singing his words along with Danny then crashing the afterparty with Sandy…
The great thing about director John Carney (Flora and Son; Sing Street; Once), who co-wrote this with Peter McDonald, is that he understands musicians and the music business, having himself been a bass player for Dublin band The Frames between 1990 and 1993. He contributes music to his films (Once is an exception), and How to Write a Song is perfectly judged as an anthemic ballad that you imagine becoming a huge hit. It also means that the musician characters in his films really do feel like musicians, while he has a convincing grasp of what makes other music industry types, such as a roadie or an artist’s manager, tick.
The whole situation with The Bride and Groove is all too horribly believable, one noteworthy scene including Rick alienating a couple by refusing to play How to Write a Song to a couple who request it. So too is Danny’s afterparty in his spacious, luxury L.A. home, which Rick and Sandy get into via Barbara (Juliette Crosbie), an old friend of Rick’s they run into backstage. Spotting a vintage guitar on the wall, Sandy can’t resist playing it to an enthusiastic, impromptu audience of partygoers despite having been asked by Rick to keep a low profile while he finds Danny.
The whole situation with Danny trapped between his intuition that Rick is, basically, a decent guy and his manager’s determination to protect his client is likewise all too horribly believable.
The narrative also shows quite a bit of Rick’s home life with wife and daughter. Not always easy, sometimes messy round the edges – basically, a family. His current carer may be less than satisfactory, but as for his personal life, he really wouldn’t have it any other way.
As the narrative heads towards its climax, you’re hoping against hope that Rick will find some way of writing the wrong that has been perpetrated against him, but instead we watch as he makes peace with himself about the whole thing. That decision to turn his back on the business to marry the love of his life still holds good.
This may be Carney’s best film since Once, referenced by the (re-)appearance of a longer-beared Glen Hansard still busking in the same spot that he did at the beginning that film. An audience-pleaser in the best sense: highly recommended.
Power Ballad is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, May 29th.
Trailer: