Martin's Musings

John Carney is a filmmaker who frustrates me.

He makes music-centric movies that fall into two buckets. The first includes small-scale films like Once and Sing Street that are full of heart and feature hardscrabble characters who find salvation in their music. Both films also have soundtracks with one great song after another. (Perhaps not coincidentally, they both have been adapted for the stage; Once even won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2012.)

But Carney also tends to swing for the mainstream, and that’s when we get movies like Begin Again and Flora and Son, both of which feature more well-known actors (like Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) playing characters whose passion for music doesn’t ring as true. Likewise (and not surprisingly), the music in those films isn’t as good.

Unfortunately, Carney’s latest film, Power Ballad, falls in that latter bucket. And it’s a shame, because this one has all the makings of a true crowd pleaser. It’s just a bit off-key. Not a total trainwreck, but definitely not the kind of song you’re going to put on repeat.