Entertainment
Versatile and self-aware, Betty Gilpin moves with ease onscreen and onstage
NEW YORK — Betty Gilpin is not one to complain.
She spent seven months in New Mexico making “American Primeval,” a gory western set in the treacherous Utah Territory in 1857. She filmed in the elements, often at night, with the most volatile co-stars of all: horses. The long shoot was nearing completion when Hollywood went on strike in mid-2023, shutting down “American Primeval” for months. By the time the production resumed in early 2024, Gilpin was six months pregnant with her second child and no longer in a condition to mount a horse. So producers got her a robotic steed.
“It wasn’t the most easy,” is all she’ll grant. But by any reasonable measure, making “American Primeval” was an ordeal. Thankfully, Gilpin had her husband, Cosmo Pfeil, and their daughter, Mary, now 4, with her on location.
“That was my grand equalizer,” she says. “I would spend my days screaming bloody murder in a petticoat on a horse, then get home and hunch over in a candy cane position and do bath and bedtime. Being a mom in an Airbnb is way harder than filming on top of a ski mountain in below zero degrees.”
On a rainy morning in December, Gilpin has just arrived at a cafe in New York City’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. In a beet red sweater adorned with a diagram of the uterus, she has already squeezed in a session at the gym and tended to her daughters, including the youngest, now 7 months old.
Motherhood, she says, “gives you permanent access, whether you want it or not, to a darker, more rooted self.”
That served her well in “American Primeval,” in which she plays Sara Rowell, a woman with a mysterious past trying to start a new life on the frontier with her son, Devin (Preston Mota). With bounty hunters hot on her trail, Sara hires a taciturn stranger named Isaac (Taylor Kitsch) to guide them to safety, which proves elusive in a region where the Army, Native Americans, Mormon militiamen and other settlers are locked in a battle for control.
In “American Primeval,” Gilpin plays Sara Rowell, a woman traveling westward with her young son, Devin (Preston Mota), left, who is assisted by Isaac (Taylor Kitsch) on the perilous journey.
(Matt Kennedy / Netflix )
From writer-creator Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”), director Peter Berg (“Lone Survivor”) and executive producer Eric Newman (“Narcos”), “American Primeval” offers an unrelentingly violent take on the history of westward expansion, one that is likely to stoke controversy, particularly in its portrayal of the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Later this month, Gilpin will make her Broadway debut as Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!,” taking over for Cole Escola in the bawdy hit that reimagines the doleful first lady as a batty aspiring cabaret star. In a strange coincidence of casting, she recently finished shooting the Netflix drama “Death by Lightning,” in which she portrays Lucretia Garfield, the wife of another doomed 19th century president.
But there’s more to Gilpin — much, much more — than bonnets and hoopskirts.
Since her breakthrough role as a soap star-turned-professional wrestler in the dearly departed Netflix series “GLOW,” Gilpin has displayed a remarkable range, not only from role to role but also within individual performances. (Not to be confined to one art form, she also published “All the Women in My Brain and Other Concerns,” a collection of essays, in 2022.) She moves among genres and time periods with ease and she gravitates to layered roles that showcase her versatility: In the inventive sci-fi comedy “Mrs. Davis,” she plays a time-traveling nun fighting a sentient form of artificial intelligence. In the recent “Three Women,” based on Lisa Taddeo’s book of the same name, she portrays Lina, a neglected Indiana housewife struggling with chronic pain and unmet desire.
This has resulted in a level of notoriety for Gilpin that is captured by an interaction she had earlier at the gym. “I could tell a woman was looking at me like she thought we went to high school together — just squinting at me, trying to place me in her yearbook. Then she realized, ‘Oh, I recognize that person from an ensemble miniseries.’”
It’s a comfortable place to be, she says. “I always roll my eyes when I read interviews with actors who talk about how happy they are with their level of nonfame. So you’re doing this public interview?”
Gilpin is quick-witted and highly quotable, with a gift for conjuring evocative imagery on the fly, all of which makes for a lively interview. But she’s also savvy and self-aware enough to anticipate how anything she says might be taken out of context in a media environment where, as she puts it, “We’re all scrolling our phones seeing the most horrifying things, and then our algorithms are feeding us little bits of candy to distract us from the horror.”
“Too many times I’ve done an interview where I say something with my eyes crossed, in a weird demented joke accent, and it’s the headline, sounding totally sincere,” she says. “I can’t control where in one’s toilet scrolling one is finding my interview about neuroses and vulnerability, right?”
The actor is savvy and self-aware enough to anticipate how anything she says might be taken out of context: “We’re all scrolling our phones seeing the most horrifying things, and then our algorithms are feeding us little bits of candy to distract us from the horror.”
(Victoria Will / For The Times)
Acting was “always sort of destined,” says Gilpin, whose parents, Jack Gilpin and Ann McDonough, though not household names, have worked steadily in film, TV and theater for decades. (Her dad plays Church the Butler on HBO’s “The Gilded Age.”)
Raised in New York and Connecticut, she attended Fordham University, where she studied acting with a Jesuit priest, Father George Drance, who encouraged her to use visual metaphors. “It just took me out of my own head, and made it a magic process, rather than a math equation: ‘Is this right or wrong?’” she says. “Thinking about it in an abstract way helps me shimmy my feathers for the coins.”
She then spent roughly a decade working off-Broadway and cycling through small roles in indie movies and TV procedurals. (Perhaps you saw her as a teacher who had sex with her student in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”?)
A guest stint on “Nurse Jackie,” where she befriended writers Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, led to “GLOW.” Her performance in the nostalgic ’80s dramedy was notable for its intense physicality — she body-slammed like a pro — and the way Gilpin’s character Debbie Eagan channeled her personal anguish into her wrestling persona, an all-American bombshell known as Liberty Belle.
The part earned Gilpin three Emmy nominations and a legion of new fans, including comedian Matt Rogers.
“I just couldn’t ignore the fact that it was one of the best performances I have probably seen, ever — just the sheer versatility of it,” says Rogers, who co-hosts the podcast “Las Culturistas” with Bowen Yang. “As an audience member, whether you’re reading the book she wrote or watching her onscreen, you are well fed.” Gilpin has become a frequent guest on the show, where she and Rogers have bonded over their shared “theater kid” sensibility and the complications of being creative people in a commercial industry.
“When you become viable in an industry way, but you have to reconcile that with the fact that you have this artist’s spirit that wants to roll around on the ground and do theater games,” Rogers says. Gilpin, now a friend, “happens to be trapped in the body of this ingenue leading lady, but she is a real pelvic-floor-of-doom theater person,” he adds. “She feels it in her guts.”
Production on Season 4 of “GLOW” was underway when the onset of COVID-19 shut it down in March 2020; Netflix abruptly canceled the show later that year. “Three Women,” a rare premium drama exploring sexuality from a female perspective, was sold by Showtime during a reorganization at Paramount Global and premiered on Starz in September.
Gilpin as Debbie “Liberty Belle” Eagan in “Glow.” (Erica Parise/Netflix)
Gilpin as Lina in Starz’s “Three Women.” (JOJO WHILDEN/JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME)
Gilpin probably has the right to gripe about how industry turmoil affected these projects but, again, that’s not her style. “I feel very proud and confused at my luck in the business. I’m certainly not shaking my fist about any weird disappointments or corporations making decisions that have nothing to do with me,” she says. “Maybe it comes from starting in the theater, where all that existed was the moment you were making something.”
While some roles can feel fleeting or elusive, with Lina, the unhappy housewife who embarks on a passionate affair with her high school boyfriend in “Three Women,” there was “an eerie clarity” the whole time, Gilpin says. “It’s probably the most connected I’ve ever been to a character.” It helped to have Taddeo’s book at the ready, because of how “she focuses on the moments that we don’t tell each other about — the things we’d edit out of our journals, if we knew they were going to be read,” Gilpin says. “We think those things are ours alone … when actually those moments in our lives where we are yearning for something forbidden or mourning something inexplicable, those are the shared DNA that connects us.”
Shailene Woodley, who plays author Gia in “Three Women” — a stand-in for Taddeo — was impressed by how Gilpin gave agency to Lina, who could easily have come across as a doormat. “I think a lot of actors would have easily followed the simple road of playing Lina with extreme intimacy and vulnerability. What Betty did was give her an electric force of hope and willpower… Where most actors, including myself, would have turned left, Betty turns right, and she finds colors and layers that other people would miss.”
She brings similarly unexpected colors to Sara in “American Primeval,” whom she likens to “a Brontë character who is suddenly forced to play death-rugby in Hades.”
Gilpin likens Sara in “American Primeval” to “a Brontë character who is suddenly forced to play death-rugby in Hades.”
( Netflix )
“As wild as this series is, I did recognize a lot of the things that Sara struggled with as a mom, especially having my first daughter in 2020. I had a lot of catastrophic thinking and was very afraid all the time,” she says.
Berg, who has directed intense action movies like “Deepwater Horizon” — filmed on an oil rig — says “American Primeval” was “the most brutal thing I’ve ever done.” When he found out that Gilpin would be returning from the strike six months pregnant, he thought they might have to drastically rewrite the remainder of the series. Instead, “She was leading the charge every day, up and down that mountain, pregnant, with a smile on her face,” he says, adding, with only a trace of hyperbole, “Betty Gilpin is a true American legend.”
The director, who often encourages improvisation on set, says Gilpin found ways to bring much-needed humor and sweetness to the grim material.
“She would look at me every once in a while and say, ‘You know, it’s not going to kill any of us to laugh a little bit with this show. It can’t be all scalpings, shootings, bear attacks and drownings. We should be able to find some moments to laugh and to feel love,’” Berg recalls. “She found both of those.”
“I keep waking up in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’” says Gilpin, who will take over as Mary Todd Lincoln from Cole Escola, creator of “Oh, Mary!”
(Victoria Will / For The Times)
Kitsch recalls how Gilpin improvised a tender scene in which Sara gently teases Isaac for having a discernible heartbeat. “I won’t tell anyone,” she says. He praises Gilpin as an instinctual performer whose meticulous preparation — including working with a dramaturg who creates a syllabus of readings to help her get into a character’s mindset — enables her “to just let go and not worry about a bad take or repercussions. She just swings,” he says. “She was always game on, just super focused on the work and trying to get the best out of the day.”
For now, Gilpin is focused on donning Lincoln’s bratty curls and putting her mark on the role that has made Escola the toast of Broadway. “I keep waking up in the middle of the night, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’” she says. (These bouts of panic are often cut short by her 4-year-old, who’s been getting up twice a night lately.)
In an email, Escola remembers being immediately struck by Gilpin in “GLOW.” “She has that mix of toughness and vulnerability that I typically associate with Old Hollywood broads,” they said. The nonbinary playwright and actor is also a fan of a character that Gilpin occasionally portrays on her private Instagram account, whom she describes as “a delusional, out of touch regional theater actress who is in her dressing room a half hour before curtain.” When Escola began to think about a replacement, Gilpin seemed like an obvious choice: “Betty is a capital-A actress with her own unique palette as an artist. I don’t know how [the character] will change yet but it will. She understands comedy and cares deeply about the heart of this character, that’s all that matters.”
“Oh, Mary!” captures the fact that “we are all overlooked, unique geniuses and delusional mediocre idiots at the same time,” Gilpin says. “I will probably be both in the show.”
Gilpin finds comfort knowing that, coincidentally, both her close friend Cristin Milioti and her father made their Broadway debuts on the stage where she’ll make hers. A few weeks ago, she went to the theater for a fitting, and the sensory experience — the crackle of the speaker backstage, the scrape of the hangers being moved across a costume rack — made her tear up.
“It feels like a return to the reason I’m on this earth, honestly,” she says. “Not to sound too insanely out of touch.”
Movie Reviews
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
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.
Ynon Kreiz, chief executive of Mattel.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
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.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“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.”
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.
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