The Popkorn Junkie :: August Rush

      Like any grandiose Las Vegas Strip neon sign August Rush brightly flashes target audiences a catchy message up top—spurring us to make a (metaphoric) journey within. "I believe in music the way that some people believe in fairy tales," says August Rush (Freddie Highmore, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). The grand message in this wishful fairy tale is that music's mysterious power can be heard if we are willing to listen.

      In 1995, accomplished cellist Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell, The Upside of Anger) has a one-night-stand with Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Match Point), a rock 'n roll singer-guitarist. When she becomes pregnant Lyla's career-controlling father intervenes by making it clear he doesn't want her to have the baby, lest the tot interfere with her career. The lengths her father goes to are realized when a car accidentally hits the expecting Lyla. Emerging from unconsciousness following the accident, Lyla is told the baby did not survive.

      At least that's what Lyla's father would have her believe. And so Lyla and Louis go on with their lives by going separate ways.

      More than ten years later—with wisdom enough to impress even Star Wars' Yoda—11-year-old orphan Evan Taylor patiently sets out alone into NYC's concrete jungle, against all odds, to find his birth parents.

      Not unlike the young protagonist in The Sixth Sense (1999), the freak-like Evan (some kids make fun of him) experiences isolation among his peers because of his exceptional gift—composing music. He's been writing symphonic music for only six months (eat your heart out Beethoven). He determinedly composes rhapsodies with a transcendent, telekinetic-like purpose. The precocious musician believes he can reach out and reconnect with his parents through his melodious creations.

      With a heightened awareness like that of a genetically engineered super-canine, August perceives noise polluting cityscape sounds as pleasing orchestral arrangements. The movie's strength lies in its ability to put us inside August's harmonious head. As his musical productivity turns up, a homeless father-figure named the ‘Wizard’ (Robin Williams, Night at the Museum) dubs him with the colorful moniker August Rush. The ‘Wizard’ sees August as a cash cow because of his talents. Williams's ‘Wizard’ (fashioned like a 3rd rate red-haired version of U2’s Bono) is an underwritten transient character, literally and figuratively—coming across as inappropriately creepy rather than misguidedly eccentric.

      August Rush is as determined in delivering its tunefully driven power-of-love message as its young lead character is in successfully seeking out his parents. As August, Highmore does achieve the difficult task—especially for a child actor—of holding this undemanding fable together by its clichéd-worn seams. It's not that this melodic fairy tale is not worth tuning in to—it’s an inventive spin on a run-of-the-mill theme—but the fact that your heart, mind, and ears are inundated with the message so often you are wearied by film's end.

-- Louis Boram ( 2 1/2 out of 4 pops )

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