POWER BALLAD

Here's the hard part: there's a genuinely nice movie buried in here. Power Ballad tells an engaging, warm-hearted story that ends up honoring family — a husband who values his marriage, a song that turns out to be a father's love for his little girl, and a family that finally solves the problem the hero couldn't solve alone. That's worth something.

But the movie buries it. There are more than fifty "f" words and two strong profanities, two scenes of marijuana use, and a scene staging a wedding between two women. The source calls this content excessive and ultimately unacceptable — and after weighing the good against it, so do we.

You can admire the writing and still turn it off. A story about a father's love shouldn't cost you this much to sit through. Skip this one.

Rick Power is an American wedding singer past his prime, fronting a band in Dublin. Danny Wilson is a former boy-band star whose career is fading fast unless he can land one more hit.

One night in Ireland, the two musicians meet and jam together. Rick plays a song of his own. Danny flies home to America — and months later, Rick hears his own music on the radio, reborn as Danny's comeback single. The trouble is, Rick has no proof it was ever his. What he decides to do about that is where the story turns.

Three stars, and they're earned by the writing more than anything flashy. The story is nicely constructed and moves well, even if it leans hard on formula. Director John Carney plants visual cues everywhere — a literal "Caution" sign warning Rick to be careful, a street musician's robbery that mirrors Rick's own dilemma, small contrasts between Rick hauling his own garbage and Danny having a worker do it. They tell the story efficiently, but you can see exactly why each one is there.

The songs echo familiar pop sounds, and the camera work is pleasant but average. There's the occasional loose thread — a robbery the characters simply never react to. It's a competent, likable film that never quite surprises you. The craft is real; the polish is ordinary.

At its center, Power Ballad believes in family, and it says so plainly. Rick genuinely values being married and having a family. When his revenge scheme fails, it's his family — and specifically his daughter — who ends up making things right. Best of all, the movie reveals that the song at the heart of the plot was never a romantic love song at all: Rick wrote it out of love for his daughter, Aja, when she was two. That's a lovely, true note about what a father's affection actually is.

The film also holds up hard work and enterprise, siding with the man who earns his way rather than the one who takes a shortcut. And it lets us see that revenge is a dead end — Rick's "payback" trip to Los Angeles accomplishes nothing, while love and family accomplish everything.

But the movie undercuts its own message. It stages a wedding between two women as an ordinary event, redefining what Scripture treats as settled — that marriage is the union of a man and a woman (Genesis 2:24). And the pervasive profanity and drug use drag the whole thing down.

The good longing here is real: Rick wants to be seen, credited, and loved. Scripture answers that ache in the only place it's finally safe — "for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control" (2 Timothy 1:7). The recognition he chases from the world, he already had at home.

There's a warm, family-loving movie somewhere inside Power Ballad — but you'd have to wade through more than fifty "f" words, drug use, and a redefined wedding to reach it. That's too high a price for a story this slight. Our answer is the same one we started with: skip it. Looking for something the whole family can enjoy tonight instead? Try our latest family-friendly picks.