| Lionsgate Films | Release Date: May 29, 2026 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
22
Mixed:
13
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Jun 4, 2026
If you expect the best from everyone involved, prepare for disappointment. But without giving anything away, it’s fair to say Power Ballad is a mix of feel-good, then feel-bad, then mostly feel good again. That’s a recipe for a pretty good popcorn movie, even if you can’t dance to it.
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The GuardianMay 27, 2026
Power Ballad is about making it and dreaming big, about every busker never giving up on hopes of one day being mega. But as so often with Carney, it’s about something else, usually left unacknowledged in movies about music or any sort of showbusiness: the terrible binary of success and failure.
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May 27, 2026
Power Ballad isn’t just a case of a director rehashing his greatest hits — even though the most famous song from Carney’s most famous movie makes a cameo. While it begins in similar fashion to nearly all of his movies — with an unlikely collaboration sparking sonic kismet and a host of catchy tunes — it also takes those familiar tropes in some welcome new directions.
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ColliderMar 18, 2026
Jun 4, 2026
As with Carney’s other music movies, the songs aren’t special because of their catchiness but because of their meaning. While Rick hectors Danny into doing the right thing, the question becomes about what the right thing even is. Plus, as always, Carney’s ear for a genuinely good tune is peerless. Rock on.
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Jun 2, 2026
While the movie may not get the overall music business as right as it could have, Carney sure can cut the beast where it hurts. His blend of ruthless, observant Irish humor and admirably restrained vein of sentimentality doesn’t make for the cuddliest cinematic singalong, but it delivers a message every daydream rock star ought to hear.
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IndieWireMay 29, 2026
The film isn’t so bold as to suggest that it’s never too late to find fortune and fame in the entertainment industry. But it replaces those fantasies of overnight success with something richer, and its conviction in the power of songwriting as something that doesn’t have to be connected to record sales and stadium shows makes it a charming entry in a filmography that has never tried to be anything it’s not.
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Radio TimesJun 6, 2026
Shorn of its music, however, Power Ballad pivots between drama and comedy without ever staking a claim to be either; the subject matter could have been bitingly satirical, or a more focused cautionary tale, but instead settles into fuzzy-round-the-edges bromance which, while undeniably engaging, might struggle to stay in the memory once the closing credits have rolled.
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May 27, 2026
Next Best PictureMar 18, 2026
Carney does dig into something interesting about inspiration: how, in music, it’s an amalgam of origins that’s harder to define than in other art forms. Still, the rest of the film settles for being a feel-good dramedy, with any depth merely trailing behind the tear-inducing monologues these characters deliver.
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May 28, 2026
There are some promising themes in “Power Ballad” — the soulful joys of collaboration, the precarity of celebrity, the evils of the music industry — but the movie never develops them. Instead, the director John Carney, who wrote the script with Peter McDonald, keeps everything nice and insistently light, gesturing at complexities rather than delving into them.
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