To describe August Rush as a piece of shameless hokum doesn't quite do justice to the potentially shock-inducing sugar content of this contemporary fairy tale about a homeless, musically gifted miracle child. August Rush (Freddie Highmore) hears music everywhere. Whether it's the wind in the grass or the roar of a subway, the sounds of the world are a symphony to his ears, and the movie's soundtrack offers a Hollywood realization of a John Cage idea in which all sounds are music.
August, introduced as Evan Taylor, has absolute faith that music will mystically reunite him with his parents, who he is certain must be somewhere out there, although he has no clues to their identity. As we learn early in the movie, those parents - Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irish rock singer with a musical sweet tooth and Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), a classical cellist - fell in love at first sight and conceived him on a rooftop overlooking Washington Square but were kept apart by her conniving, ambitious father (William Sadler).
Months after their night of love, the pregnant Lyla is hit by a car and gives birth prematurely. In the most preposterous of the many ludicrous plot twists in a movie whose continuity is flimsy at best, her father forges her signature on adoption papers, gives the baby away, then tells her it died. Louis and Lyla abandon their performing careers and morosely search for they know not what.
PHOTO: AP
In the meantime, Evan flees from a group home in New Jersey to New York City, where he falls in with a band of runaways living in the old Fillmore East Theater in the East Village. Here, Wizard (Robin Williams), the Fagin character in the movie's Oliver Twist-inspired subplot, reigns as their cunning surrogate father who collects and distributes their earnings from panhandling.
When Evan, who has never touched a musical instrument, picks up a guitar for the first time and plays it like a pro, Wizard christens him August Rush, a rock-star-worthy name taken from the side of a truck, and seeing a potential gold mine exploits August for every penny he can earn. After the boy demonstrates the same talent on a church organ, there is no stopping his meteoric ascent. In six months he is conducting a symphony orchestra performance of his original composition on the Great Lawn in New York's Central Park.
The movie, directed by Kirsten Sheridan from a screenplay by Nick Castle and James Hart, is acted in a style best described as overawed. Oblivious to persecution and exploitation, Highmore's August glides through the movie with a beatific smile on his face. Rhys Meyers and Russell, who have no romantic chemistry, wander about in an emotional limbo.
There is a lot of music in August Rush. But except for a couple of gospel songs, most of it, including August's Rhapsody (composed by Mark Mancina), is amorphous, pumped-up schlock.
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