Entertainment

For 'Chimp Crazy' director Eric Goode, 'the end justifies the means'

Published

2 years ago

August 25, 2024

For 'Chimp Crazy' director Eric Goode, 'the end justifies the means'

The filmmaker expected his subject to be angry. To cry or scream, curse him out. He had, after all, betrayed her.

For two years, Eric Goode, the producer behind the mega-hit “Tiger King,” had purposefully concealed his identity from the star of his new documentary series. Her name was Tonia Haddix, an Ozarks-based exotic animal broker who was obsessed with chimpanzees. And Goode would ultimately play a key role in having the “humanzee” she considered her child, an ape named Tonka, removed from her home.

Yet when Goode and Haddix finally came together for a filmed face-to-face, she was cordial. Friendly, even. “She was so surprisingly OK with it,” the director, 66, recalls now. “Almost to the degree where she felt more important because it was me.”

In fact, Haddix allowed the production’s cameras to trail her for another year and a half, culminating in “Chimp Crazy,” the four-part docuseries that premiered on HBO and Max this month. Now that the program is out, however, Haddix — who did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Times — is publicly saying she never would have participated if she’d known from the outset that it was a Goode production. Critics, too, have called the series’ ethics into question, voicing concerns about what standards should apply to nonfiction filmmakers, especially those making series with high entertainment value.

“Chimp Crazy’s” main subject, Tonia Haddix.

(HBO)

Goode admits he doesn’t know how he identifies: Journalist? “I don’t think so.” Animal rights activist? “No. I’m more of an animal welfare guy.” He wasn’t even a filmmaker before “Tiger King.”

Goode does not necessarily feel obligated to follow the educational or ethical guidelines by which conservationists and journalists abide. Without these “indoctrinated boundaries,” as he calls them, he has the freedom to find — or, in the case of “Chimp Crazy,” provoke — dramatic on-screen conflicts and satisfying resolutions that traditional documentarians might not. Still, Goode’s own discomfort with the tactics he employed against Haddix points to the pitfalls of this approach. He may not characterize himself as an activist, but his work as a filmmaker originated with his desire to protect exotic animals — and any viewer of “Chimp Crazy” or “Tiger King” who isn’t aware of that background is liable to feel unmoored.

With its cast of outlandish characters and a well-timed premiere date — it launched on Netflix in March 2020, right when COVID-19 lockdowns forced everyone indoors — “Tiger King,” a seven-episode exploration of the world of private tiger ownership, became one of the wildest successes of the streaming age. It made subject Joe Exotic, an eccentric felon with an affinity for mullets, tattooed eyeliner and big cats, into a household name. It propelled Carole Baskin, Joe’s archnemesis, onto “Dancing With the Stars.” And in 2022, the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which makes it illegal for private citizens to purchase animals like lions, tigers and leopards, was finally signed into law by President Biden after a decade of advocacy by animal rights groups.

Goode is not a big-cat aficionado himself, but he’s been drawn to reptiles since he was a boy. Growing up in Sonoma in Northern California, he and his four siblings roamed the family’s land, playing with spiders and snakes. It was the gift he received on his 6th birthday that most captured his attention, though: a Greek tortoise, whose shell would go on to become the logo for the Turtle Conservancy he opened in Ojai in 2005.

In his 20s, Goode was a nightlife fixture in New York City, co-founding Area, the 1980s club that featured art installments and merchandise from the likes of Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He would go on to launch such establishments as the Waverly Inn, the Bowery Hotel and the Jane Hotel. He palled around with Madonna, dated Naomi Campbell and directed a couple of Nine Inch Nails videos — one of which, “Pinion,” was so racy that MTV wouldn’t play the full thing on air.

A man and a woman pose in front of an American flag in the 1980s.

It was during this era that Maurice Rodrigues, then a part-time zookeeper at the Bronx Zoo, first encountered Goode. When the fish tank broke at Goode’s now-defunct restaurant the Park, Rodrigues was called in for a repair. Afterward, Goode invited him to dinner there.

“I’m in my early 30s, just this little Jersey boy, and we’re sitting at the best table in the place surrounded by actual models,” Rodrigues remembers. “But Eric and I started talking about turtles so much that we completely ignored these beautiful women. Finally, they got frustrated and said they were leaving. And Eric’s like, ‘OK, bye!’”

Bonded by their love of chelonians — turtles, terrapins and tortoises — the two men began traveling the world together to research the reptiles. But they found the Turtle Survival Alliance conferences they attended to be drab. Instead of listening to boring lectures regurgitating scientific papers they’d already read, why not present video footage?

“Our aim was to try to buy animals from poachers and catch them on camera,” says Rodrigues. “We got undercover cameras and found a pair of eyeglasses that had a spy camera in them. I thought we were going to maybe get killed.”

Then, in 2009, “The Cove” came out. The documentary, in which a team set out to secretly capture a bloody Japanese dolphin slaughter, was named the best of the year at the Academy Awards. “That’s when Eric said, ‘Let’s not do these little amateur films anymore,’” says Rodrigues. “‘Let’s do something for a global audience that we can pitch to anyone, and if it’s successful, maybe we can raise money for conservation.’”

A monkey, wearing a shirt and pants, stands on a man's shoulders.

Using his own money, Goode began bringing a small professional production crew along on his travels with the aim of making a project about the extinction crisis. CNN got wind of the footage and committed to shooting a pilot for a TV series. The network ultimately passed on the show in 2019, but after “Tiger King,” Goode started to revisit some of the topics he’d been interested in for his next project.

“We were looking at bushmeat markets in Southeast Asia, female trophy hunters, butterfly collectors,” said Jeremy McBride, Goode’s producing partner. “We wanted to explore this broader theme of individuals’ relationships with exotic animals.”

That’s when things started heating up at the Missouri Primate Foundation. The facility’s owner, Connie Casey, bred chimpanzees that starred in movies, appeared on Hallmark greeting cards and appeared at children’s birthday parties — including a chimp named Travis, whom she sold for $50,000 when he was an infant, and who went on to attack a Connecticut woman named Charla Nash in 2009, ripping out her eyes, nose, lips and nine fingers.

After receiving a dozen citations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Casey was sued in 2017 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which claimed she had violated the Endangered Species Act. That’s when Haddix, trying to purchase a chimp, learned about Casey’s struggles and agreed to take legal ownership of the animals in the hopes of helping her new friend evade trouble.

But PETA did not relent. In 2020, the organization negotiated an agreement with Haddix that stipulated she could keep some chimps on the Missouri property if she renovated and expanded their facilities.

It was in the midst of this legal back-and-forth, in June 2021, when Haddix received a phone call from Dwayne Cunningham.

Goode brought in the former Barnum & Bailey circus clown, who was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison in 1999 for trafficking tortoises and endangered iguanas, to be his liaison to the reclusive Casey, who hadn’t granted an interview to anyone since the journalist Peter Laufer for his 2010 book, “Forbidden Creatures.” If she was going to talk to anyone, Goode surmised, it would more likely be a guy whose “livelihood was also shut down because of animal rights groups” than the guy who made “Tiger King.”

Cunningham was open to the assignment because, as an animal lover, he wanted to see with his own eyes if the chimps were truly being mistreated. Likewise, Goode couldn’t forget what Laufer — a friend who is also on the advisory board of his Turtle Conservancy — told him about his time in Missouri.

“Peter described it as being so horrific — that he’d done prison interviews and been in civil wars, and nothing prepared him for it,” says Goode. “What made me feel like it was worth it, morally and ethically, was the knowledge I had about what was going on inside that house. I thought: ‘You know what? The end justifies the means, in this case.’”

The plan worked — sort of. Though Casey never agreed to an interview, Cunningham did win over Haddix. She later told Rolling Stone that she agreed to be part of the project because Cunningham was “a big animal person” who “would even come out early just so he can help bottle-feed some of our baby hoofstock.”

With her collection of wigs, eyelash extensions and spray-tanned body, the 54-year-old made for a visually intriguing subject. Plus, she was forthcoming, admitting to the cameras that she cared more about Tonka than her own human son.

A woman in heavy makeup rests with eyes closed.

Just days after the film crew arrived in Missouri, a judge ruled that all seven of the chimps who lived there would be sent to a Florida ape sanctuary because Haddix had not renovated the habitat to the standards previously agreed upon with PETA.

But when local sheriff’s deputies and the U.S. Marshals Service arrived at the Missouri property to seize the seven chimps on July 28, 2021, they found only six animals. Haddix told them the missing primate, Tonka, had died on May 30 from heart failure.

As “Chimp Crazy” reveals, however, Haddix had sneaked her most beloved chimp to a friend’s house in Ohio. From there, she moved Tonka to her home near the Lake of the Ozarks, where she had outfitted her basement with a cage.

Almost immediately after kidnapping Tonka, Haddix let the documentary crew in on her secret. But she still did not know that Goode was behind the project — something he was increasingly “not fully comfortable with,” he acknowledges. “I don’t want to be that kind of person. I just kept thinking, ‘When is the right time to tell her that this is me?’ I always kind of thought it could have been sooner.”

The crew, meanwhile, was growing concerned. Haddix was in the dark, and now they had unwittingly become accessories to a crime. Alan Cumming, who starred with Tonka in the 1997 film “Buddy,” teamed up with PETA to offer a $20,000 reward for information about the chimp’s whereabouts. Cunningham, who is referred to as a “proxy director” in the series, says he and some camerapeople raised these issues with their bosses.

“I’m sure it was hard for the crew to have to understand that maybe there’s a greater good in not acting so quickly,” Goode says. “It was a very unsettling period. I was talking to my primatologist friends and saying, ‘If I don’t do something, is this chimp going to be OK?’”

A woman faces a chimp through a clear barrier.

Goode shared video of Tonka from the basement with the scientists, who attempted to identify physical tics that indicate mental distress. Cunningham shared his own observations of the chimp with Goode: Tonka was clean. He wasn’t having anxiety attacks. Yes, Tonia occasionally fed him Happy Meals or Powerade, but “he was always loved,” Cunningham says.

In May 2022, Haddix confided to Cunningham that she planned to euthanize the chimp; she said the animal’s veterinarian told her Tonka was so unwell it was cruel to keep him alive. Cunningham notified Goode, who decided it was finally time to tell PETA where Tonka was.

The producers called PETA on May 30, 2022, and requested an in-person meeting. The next day, they met with the organization’s lawyers. On June 1, PETA filed an emergency motion to remove Tonka from Haddix’s care.

“We would have wanted to know the moment the filmmakers found out that Tonka was in Tonia’s basement,” says Brittany Peet, the PETA Foundation’s general counsel for captive animal law enforcement. “I’m incredibly grateful that they did ultimately loop us in so we were able to get Tonka out. I don’t think that every documentary filmmaker would have made the choice that they did, called us and risked their project to save a life.”

In the days leading up to Tonka’s removal on June 5, 2022, Haddix was still in the dark about who had revealed her secret. She confessed as much to Cunningham, who wore a hidden camera when he went to talk to her during that period.

“I didn’t feel guilty,” Cunningham insists. “I always said to Tonia, ‘Don’t ever say anything to me that you don’t want the whole world to know.’ And Tonia being Tonia, she just kept talking. So I didn’t feel guilty; I felt like I was doing my job. But I felt bad for a friend, because I could see that the love story was spiraling out of control.”

When he eventually met Haddix, Goode began by telling her that he related to her. “There are certain animals,” he says in the series, “that if people took them away from me, I would be very, very upset.”

He was referring to the chelonians he keeps on his Ojai property, where approximately 40 endangered species of turtles or tortoises live. While he says he does like being around them for “selfish reasons,” the animals reside in Southern California because they’re either extinct in the wild or so endangered that poachers pose a critical risk to the remaining population. “I don’t want to say I’m, like, trying to create a loophole for why I can keep a tortoise and someone can’t keep a chimp,” he says. “It would certainly be better to keep our animals in the wild, just because the environmental conditions are very hard to replicate.”

Goode has been a controversial figure in conservation circles. Craig Stanford, a human evolutionary biologist who has led USC’s Jane Goodall Research Center, says his colleagues often question his association with someone who directed something “really trashy” like “Tiger King.” (He is on the Turtle Conservancy’s Board of Directors and sat for a “Tiger King” interview that was eventually cut.)

“How dare you capitalize on these gorgeous, endangered animals to make millions?” Stanford says, describing his peers’ criticism. “I say, ‘Well, OK, yes, but he did shine a light, and it did lead to stricter regulations. And he did donate some of the proceeds from it to a very good cause.’” (Goode says he and two other “Tiger King” partners donated $1 million of the series’ proceeds to a program for tigers in the wild in India.)

Such judgments are enough to make Goode wish one of his other, non-animal-centric projects — such as a documentary he recently shot about his late mother — was being released before “Chimp Crazy.” “That way, people wouldn’t think I’m just using this model of ‘Tiger King’ and that’s all I can do,” he says.

Good poses on a bright orange staircase.

Haddix, he says, has been having a difficult time with the film’s release. A few weeks ago, Cunningham traveled to St. Louis to screen all four episodes for her. After she watched the first one, which features the most video of her with Tonka, he says she cried in his arms. Then there was silence. “I told her she had to get up off the couch because we had to move it back,” Cunningham says. “She started laughing, and that kind of broke the ice a little bit.”

They’ve continued to exchange text messages, as have Haddix and Goode. The director says Haddix requested a number of “Chimp Crazy” posters be sent to her so she could sign and sell them. In public, however, she seems to be presenting a different story. And that upsets Goode.

“She said that I offered her money so she would continue to film with me, or guaranteed she could go see Tonka — both of which are absolutely, categorically not true,” he says, noting that the production did pay her for use of some archival footage.

The way Goode sees it, Haddix would have been caught eventually, with or without him. By her own admission, she told friends, family and neighbors that Tonka was in her basement.

“So yes, we are the bad guys — we turned her in. But I think that was inevitable,” he says. “I just try to use the moral compass that my mother gave me in life. I don’t know where that falls, but there definitely is one.”

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Travolta’s “Propeller: One-Way Night Coach” is One for the Ages — All Ages

Published

8 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: Travolta’s “Propeller: One-Way Night Coach” is One for the Ages — All Ages

Back in the good ol’days — the ’90s — John Travolta would love to get off the topic of “Michael,” “Pulp Fiction” or “Get Shorty” in interviews with film journalists like me and regale us with how utterly besotted he had been with his first flying experience, how that drove his passion for piloting and buying planes and airfield-adjacent luxury houses.

He didn’t even seem to mind having to move house when this or that development balked at him flying his Boeing 707 out of there on the way to locations.

Travolta would tell any journalist who asked that he was writing a kid-friendly book, “Propeller: One Way Night Coach,” based on his first flights as a child in old propeller driven airliners — cheap red-eye overnight treks with too many connections for your average jet age traveller to tolerate.

I remember picking up the book when it came out later in the ’90s — at an airport gift shop — and thinking “Well, that’s as cute as I figured.”

And now, decades later and trapped in the B-movie hell of his post “Gotti” career, Travolta’s turned that cute book into the most delightful, fanciful and colorful bon bon of a movie.

“One Way Night Coach” is a child’s fantasy of flight and flying the way it used to be — with pristine, uncrowded, futuristic airports, an early ’60s era of jets and prop planes with over-uniformed stewardesses in white gloves, the days “Back before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham,” as Sideshow Bob memorably sneered on “The Simpsons’.”

It’s a fictionalized account of Travolta’s childhood about an only child (at least two Travolta siblings have bit parts in this movie) of a never-made-it/never-will actress/single-mom (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) who indulges her aviation-obsessed eight-year-old with a cheap cross-country overnight flight.

Little Jeff (Clark Shotwell) will revel in almost every Idlewild to Pittsburgh to Dayton to Chicago to Kansas City to Denver and Los Angeles minute. He strolls into the cockpit to meet pilots, charms the stewardesses and checks out the sleeping bunks on the TWA Lockheed Super Constellation, loving even the delays if not the Chicken Cordon Bleu he’s offered on legs of the journey that offer a meal.

And as he’s an observant child, he comments (Travolta narrates) on his 50ish mother’s vamping and posing, her choice of cigarettes (Newports) and drinks, the solo traveling men whose attention she pursues and earns.

“I was her best audience,” adult Jeff remembers of the mother who’d read him plays as bedtime stories and delusionally hopes that this trip to Los Angeles might be her “big break” even though she’s pushing 50.

“Hollywood called,” she’d explain about their overnight cheap flight arrangements to ticket agents and crew. “They told me to take the next flight!”

At every turn, Jeff meets or sees kindness — stewardesses who indulge his many questions and bump them up to first class on the mostly-empty planes, a captain who fixes his toy model of a Constellation, a mentally ill flyer who flips out but is calmed by a flight attendant who isn’t overworked and frazzled in jet-powered tin-can jammed with Joe and Jane Sweatsocks who think nothing of traveling in their pajamas.

Normally, I cringe at pictures this reliant on voice-over narration. I recoil from stars who populate their picture with Sandler etc. offspring. But “Propeller” is unfailingly sweet and never cloying.

Sure, it’s fictionalized. But if you’ve followed Travolta’s life and career, a lot of him is in this — his raptoruous engagement with flying, an indulged child who developed a taste for fine food and creature comforts, a mother who was his guiding star as an actor.

I get why there are less adoring reviews than mine floating around “Propeller.” It’s unfailingly sweet. Mom’s man-hunting is seriously dated. This TWA tale is decorated with Gershwin’s majestic “Rhapsody in Blue” — United Airlines’ signature tune. And Travolta’s been around long enough for recent generations to come up and not feel a connection to the “Saturday Night Fever/Get Shorty” star whose career has fallen off and life has been visited by too much tragedy.

But I’d hate to be seated next to anybody who doesn’t appreciate this adorable, pristine and nearly perfect aviation fantasy on any flight, much less an overnight one.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Clark Shotwell, Kelly Eviston-Quinnett, Ellen Travolta, Ella Beau Travolta, Olga Hoffmann and John Travolta.

Credits: Scripted and directed by John Travolta, based on his book. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:01

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

Entertainment

After ‘Barbie’ success, Mattel looks to He-Man for another box-office lift

Published

10 hours ago

June 4, 2026

Press Room

After ‘Barbie’ success, Mattel looks to He-Man for another box-office lift

Three years ago, Mattel Inc. struck box-office gold — or rather, pink — with the billion-dollar success of “Barbie.”

In its first return to theaters since the female-forward phenomenon, the El Segundo toymaker is turning to the brawny He-Man for another box-office lift.

Its latest film, “Masters of the Universe,” opens this weekend, as Mattel looks to build on that previous success and continue extending its signature toy brands into the entertainment arena.

“The movie is very much in tune with culture,” said Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz. “Everything is much more contemporary relative to what was created more than 40 years ago, but it’s still very true to the origin story and to the DNA of the brand.”

The new film arrives at a pivotal time for Mattel, which is facing pressure from investors to grow its business. The maker of Hot Wheels, American Girl and Uno has recently confronted a challenging market for toys, beset by tariffs on goods produced overseas and weaker-than-expected demand for Barbie dolls and Fisher-Price preschool products.

Amid uncertainty in the toy market and the fallout from tariffs, Mattel’s net income dropped 25% to $398 million in 2025. And since the company announced disappointing holiday sales totals in February, its stock has dropped more than 30%, closing at $14.34 on Wednesday.

“Masters of the Universe” toys at Mattel headquarters in El Segundo.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The share price slide prompted investor Southeastern Asset Management to send a letter last month to Mattel leadership suggesting the toy maker should sell itself and go private. Southeastern manages about 4% of the company’s stock on behalf of its clients.

“The frustration among investors has been the fact that if you look at the business from 2021 through 2025 and even this year … the business really hasn’t grown,” said Eric Handler, a Roth Capital senior media and entertainment analyst, referring to Mattel. “This is a company that needed something fresh in the portfolio, and there’s a wide range of investments being made, of which ‘Masters of the Universe’ is one part.”

Kreiz pushed back on the idea that the company is not growing. In the fourth quarter of 2025, net sales were up 7% to $1.8 billion, though the result was not as strong as the company expected.

Mattel has spent $1.2 billion in the last three years to buy back shares, with an additional $1.5-billion share repurchase planned for the next three years.

“We’re investing in our own stock because we believe it is undervalued,” he told The Times in an interview at his office, which has floor-to-ceiling windows that give an expansive view of El Segundo. “We absolutely agree that the share price doesn’t reflect the progress that we’ve achieved over the last few years financially, operationally, our place in culture, the strength of our brands, and the continued expansion of the business. And more importantly, the potential that we have down the road.”

“Masters of the Universe” is a key variable in that equation.

The movie, which had a budget of roughly $170 million, is expected to bring in $25 million to $35 million in the U.S. and Canada during its debut weekend. That’s a far cry from the $162-million opening haul of “Barbie,” but box-office analysts say that film captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way that’s hard to replicate.

The ‘80s-era “Masters of the Universe” is “a property that was famous with a certain group of fans, but it hasn’t had much of a pop culture presence,” said Shawn Robbins, who directs movie analytics at Fandango and founded the forecasting site Box Office Theory. The movie has notched a respectable 74% approval rating from critics on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

“There’s been so many callbacks to nostalgic franchises,” he said. “Some people are always on board for them, and maybe the positive reviews bring people in who were on the fence. But people are also ready for something fresh and new and exciting.”

Kreiz said he’s often asked how the company will match the success of “Barbie.”

“The answer is, we don’t need to match ‘Barbie’s’ success for movies to have a meaningful economic impact on the company,” he said. “Not every movie will be ‘Barbie.’ If we create quality content that people want to watch and create quality experiences that people are engaged with, good things happen, and these brands will resonate and will be here for years to come.”

While theatrical revenue is important, the measure of success for “Masters of the Universe” could also include its eventual reception on streaming platforms and, of course, toy sales, analysts said.

There are hundreds of products tied to the movie, from collectible action figures of Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man and Camila Mendes’ Teela, to branded Uno decks, Legos, clothing and skateboards.

Skeletor from "Masters of the Universe."

“For us, it’s a huge win already,” said Robbie Brenner, president of Mattel Studios and chief content officer, who also served as a producer on the film. “We have reinvigorated and relaunched this brand that has been around for decades … and done it in a way with just the best-in-class toys. Obviously that’s our bread and butter. And then to have made an epic, incredible movie … is a huge win.”

While Mattel does not yet have sales totals for its “Masters of the Universe” toys, executives said during an earnings call in late April that product sales were “growing double digits” amid strong customer demand, particularly from adults.

When Kreiz was named CEO in 2018, he saw the potential for Mattel to expand beyond toys. In an entertainment landscape dominated by known franchises and intellectual property, the former TV and media executive wanted to leverage the company’s IP in new ways to attract consumers.

Hence, Mattel has expanded into real-world experiences such as a Barbie pop-up at Coachella or a traveling Hot Wheels monster truck show. In February, the company fully acquired Mattel163 mobile game studio after buying out a stake held by Chinese tech firm NetEase. The studio has released games based on Uno, Skip-Bo and other Mattel intellectual property.

And on the film and television front, the Mattel Studios division now has 51 people — most of whom are based in El Segundo — focused on projects across platforms.

After “Masters of the Universe,” Mattel Studios plans to release a “Matchbox” streaming movie in October. The division has more than a dozen films in development that have been announced, including an American Girl movie with Paramount, Polly Pocket with Amazon MGM Studios, as well as a live-action Magic 8 Ball series from M. Night Shyamalan.

“The journey for the company was to evolve from being a toy manufacturer that was making items to become an IP company that is managing franchises,” Kreiz said. “It’s not that we’re not creating toys — it’s obviously a big part of our business — but the opportunity is to expand so much more than the physical product.”

“Masters of the Universe” was in development for years at several different studios before it was picked up by Amazon MGM.

That partnership stemmed from Mattel’s work on the “Barbie” movie with Courtenay Valenti, then president of production and development at Warner Bros. Pictures who is now head of film at Amazon MGM.

“Masters of the Universe” felt like a good property for Mattel to bet on because of its nostalgia factor and deep bench of colorful characters, from the green tiger Battle Cat to the heavily armored Ram Man and ever meme-able Skeletor, which the company hopes will attract new audiences, Brenner said.

The movie is directed by Travis Knight — chief executive of stop-motion studio Laika who also led the 2018 “Transformers” spin-off “Bumblebee” — who Brenner said “nailed” the narrative’s tone. (It didn’t hurt that Knight was already a fan of the franchise and had sported the He-Man haircut as a child.)

“It’s a property that’s kind of out there,” said Brenner, who grew up watching He-Man and his twin sister She-Ra. “It’s got all these crazy characters. But just riding that line between what is funny and kind of irreverent and then kind of heartfelt, that is a very hard thing to put in a blender and to get right.”

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas hit the right notes in ‘Power Ballad’

Published

18 hours ago

June 3, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas hit the right notes in ‘Power Ballad’

Let’s just say that the wedding band has never occupied the most exalted rung of the ladder in music.

Playing “September” and “Celebration” is often what’s most required. As one member of the Bride and the Groove, the band at the center of John Carney’s new film, puts it: They’re not rock stars. They’re human jukeboxes.

But in “Power Ballad,” a wedding band singer and pop star cross paths. For one night, all of the stratification of the music world falls away. “Power Ballad” starts like a fairy tale.

Since 2007’s “Once,” the Irish writer-director has focused his films on the redemptive capacity of music. Carney, who was once a bassist for the Frames, knows from experience. From “Sing Street” to “Flora and Son,” he has made unabashedly earnest tales where a song, or just picking up an instrument, changes lives.

This can, undoubtedly, lead Carney into sentimental territory. Lucky for him, his chosen subject — music — is more worthy of sentiment than almost anything else. Yet the song doesn’t quite remain the same in “Power Ballad,” a movie that begins with the gentle sweetness Carney is known for, but detours into something more discordant.

Rick (Paul Rudd) is an American musician who gave up on his once-promising rock band’s future to instead live with his wife (Marcella Plunkett) and teenage daughter (a spunky, underused Beth Fallon) in Dublin. His former group was called Octagon, a perfect former band name if there ever were one.

But for years, Rick has fronted the Bride and the Groove. It’s an unromantic day job (or rather a night one) that hasn’t entirely sapped his belief in his own songwriting. During an encore at one wedding, he plays an original tune and is mentally transported to an arena full of swaying fans. When he snaps out of it, he’s staring at an empty dance floor and faces that say: That wasn’t Kool & the Gang.

At another wedding at at a castle, the band is asked to let a friend of the newlyweds sit in. They reluctantly agree, and are surprised to see the very popular boy band veteran, Danny (Nick Jonas), step on stage. He sings Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” and it’s great. Though Rick had just dismissed Danny’s music as “manufactured content for young, excitable teens,” he discovers Danny is a genuine musician.

But, later that night, something even more remarkable transpires. Rick bumps into Danny, and the two quickly hit it off. They begin jamming together and sharing songs that need work. They are both so jazzed by their unlikely collaboration that they play into the next morning.

The actual moment of artistic creation, and the craft it requires, is something the movies almost always skip over. But capturing collaborative juices flowing is exactly what Carney excels at. You can feel his joy in it. So it’s fitting that one of the unfinished songs Rick plays for Danny, “How to Write a Song (Without You),” is about creative invention.

It’s here when you wonder where “Power Ballad” is headed. Is this, for Rick, the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Will they turn into the next great songwriting duo, lifting Rick out of weddings and proving to the world that Danny is more than a boy-band pretty face?

That is very possibly the movie Carney might have made a decade ago. But “Power Ballad,” which he co-wrote with Peter McDonald (who also co-stars as a band member), shifts six months ahead in time. Rick is standing in a shopping mall when the familiar lyrics of “How to Write a Song” softly float through the stores. He stands dumbfounded in the gleaming halls of commerce, a befuddlement that slowly turns into outrage the bigger and bigger Danny’s smash hit grows.

“Power Ballad” loses some of its steam in its second half, which follows Rick’s struggle for justice. Making things considerably harder is that he can find no recorded demo of the song. His family and his band don’t even really believe him.

But even as the movie struggles to sustain its opening refrain, Carney’s film is always riffing on ideas of authenticity and aspiration in music. That Jonas is, himself, a former boy band star who has at times gone it alone, lends the movie a direct connection to contemporary music, where tussles over authorship are increasingly common.

Jonas has been good in other films (notably the “Jumanji” movies), but this is his most ambitious and convincing performance to date. It’s a testament to the movie that Danny’s theft isn’t a purely villainous act. He gives the song a bridge and the vocal power to take it to another level. He’s under mounting pressure from his label to deliver a hit. An executive (Jack Reynor) wants “Danny 2.0” but has little faith he can supply it.

But it’s an even more well-tailored role for Rudd. He memorably and very goofily played a bassist in the 2009 comedy “I Love You, Man.” But while he sings well, it’s not his musical chops that lift the performance. It’s more that Rick, a contented family man with unrealized rock-star dreams, gives the exceptionally genial Rudd more notes to play as an actor. Rudd makes for a very likeable everyman out to convince the world he is capable of a beautiful song.

And that’s the abiding belief of Carney’s. No matter all the struggles, the artistic injustices, the corporate hegemony, he still believes that if you make something truly soulful, it will break through. It will claw its way to the surface, and move people. It’s undoubtedly gotten harder since “Once,” this movie seems to admit. The world is against you. But what one person can offer, a ballad or otherwise, still has power. Fairy tale or not, that’s worth believing in.

“Power Ballad,” a Lionsgate release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout and some drug use.” Running time: 108 minutes. Three stars out of four.