BLAAAAGYAAK!
Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. That may seem like an inappropriate way to begin a review, but you'd understand if you'd sat through "August Rush," the most poorly conceived and offensive film I've seen this year.
The drama is a slap in the face to all orphans and adoptive parents, ham-fistedly insisting that abandoned children should refuse adoption, holding out hope that their birth parents will wise up and rescue them. But only if they run away, hitchhike with a trucker, hole up with a street pimp for a while, then get accepted into Juilliard and compose a symphony. The movie is PG, but merits an NC-17 for its reckless naiveté.
The title character, a product of a one-night stand 12 years earlier between a concert cellist (Keri Russell) and an Irish rocker (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), is played by the spunky Freddie Highmore, whose ethereal energy goes to waste.
People are also reading…
The kid is a runaway orphan who is given the stage name "August Rush" by Wizard (Robin Williams), a music-obsessed hobo who lives with a gaggle of lost boys he pimps out as street performers. Wizard forces the kids to pony up half their tips in order to live with him in a condemned music hall.
Having passed up a chance to be adopted, to the frustration of a concerned social worker, Richard (Terrence Howard), August thinks Wizard's setup is preferable to staying in a group home.
August is a musical genius who hears noises from, say, jackhammers, basketballs being dribbled, squealing brakes and a driver cussing out a pedestrian, and sponges it all up into his brain, shakes it and spits out concertos so amazing they make Beethoven sound like William Hung. At least, that's what we're supposed to glean from the looks of awe from passersby.
August believes music is the force that connects everyone and everything, and that by following the music of the heart, he'll find his parents. He's right, thanks to a contrived script, but his musical path also leads him to several potential child molesters.
Williams' beyond-creepy Wizard character is the most disturbed of the lot. He's a remorsefully abusive Dickensian villain whose heinous intent is surpassed only by that of director Kirsten Sheridan, who is responsible for the monstrosity.
August's mother and father, who haven't seen each other since their tryst and don't know about their son, coincidentally end up in New York while August begins to make a name for himself at Juilliard, where he's accepted under the Nonsensical Plot Scholarship.
As happenstance has it, August gets to conduct a concert in a park where his mom happens to be performing for the first time after years in retirement. The stage is just a few blocks away from where his dad rocked out in a reunion gig with his band, which he conveniently rejoined after randomly ditching his career as a guy in a suit in San Francisco who barks "Gimme 10 percent" into a cell phone.
All this could totally happen, just like an oak tree might spurt out of the ground to start singing and dancing, the Arizona Cardinals could win the next 50 Super Bowls and all prints of this film could spontaneously combust before they are screened for paying audiences.
What a rush that would be.
Review
August Rush
*
• Rated: PG for some thematic elements, mild violence and language.
• Cast: Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Robin Williams, Terrence Howard.
• Director: Kirsten Sheridan.
• Family call: Don't do this to your family.
• Running time: 114 minutes.
