Movie review: August Rush

Music as transport - music as lifestyle - music as religion. (One could do worse.)

by John P. Meyer

Here's a quick review of August Rush, which opened this past Wed. (Nov. 21); unfortunately I had to rush off to Grandma's house for turkey dinner before it was written, or this might have been posted in time to make the Rainy Sunday movie guide.

This is one of those films whose promo is liable to put off a certain audience segment (i.e., men) due to its mushy "good things happen to good people" long-shot fairy tale happy ending aesthetic. You can tell from the previews that it's about a kid who's somehow separated from his parents (who are somehow separated from each other) who then uses his music to eventually but inevitably reconnect with them. (Did I mention fairy tale?) O.K., shaky premise from the start.

The fact that the experience of the movie ends up being a far more enjoyable one that one might be led to expect (I will go so far as to say that it actually succeeds on its own fairy tale terms) is largely due to the unmannered and enthusiastic performance of the kid actor who plays the main character, 15-year-old Freddie Highmore (seen previously as Charlie Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). His character, who ends up taking the stage name August Rush, starts out life in an orphanage where his odd proclivity for creating music out of his natural environment makes him something of a geekoid pariah among his orphan peers - particularly since his orphan peers can't hear the music, it existing exclusively in August's head and all.

When our young compositional savant goes AWOL from the orphanage and heads for the big city (where his mystical aural radar - along with a lead from his caseworker, played by Terrence Howard - seems to be directing him), he runs into a kid musician named Arthur (Leon G. Thomas III) serenading a street corner for handouts. Arthur takes the rube kid - who appears to have no clue about where he's going or how to handle himself among the denizens of New York or any other city - home with him to an abandoned theater full of abandoned musical instruments (lots of those hanging around in NYC, I suppose) where Arthur hangs out with a big somewhat happy family of abandoned and musically-oriented kids who are of the wrong heritage to become involved in a certified musical conservatory, so they've turned to The Wizard (Robin Williams, made up all bronzed and buff and earringed, looking and acting not unlike a sleazier version of Mickey Rourke, who looks and acts pretty sleazy to begin with).

This Wizard chap exhibits some musical proclivity himself, and thus has turned his entrepreneurial efforts to pimping out his entourage as street corner players rather than as prostitutes. I mean, it's not like the guy's a conscience-driven philanthropist or anything - he's just willing to take money from his wards and engage in dueling guitars with August (who plays any instrument he picks up with almost immediate virtuosity).

Here's the quick flashback backstory on August's conception. His mom, Lyla Novacek (the fetching Keri Russell, spreading her elegantly-attired legs to accommodate both her pedigreed cello and - for one magical Moondance night and entirely off-camera - August's dad) is a concert musician who travels only in the highest social circles, because her father will have it no other way. She runs into Irish bad-boy rock musician Louis Connelly (the charismatic and vocally-talented Jonathan Rhys Meyers) on a rooftop to which both she and he have retreated from entirely different celebratory parties and he charms her into letting him do a quick cello impression. Cut to daylight.

Fifteen years later, August is feeling an ever-stronger mystical/musical connection between himself and his absent and unknown parents, so he decides to join and quickly graduate with compositional honors from a prestigious musical academy, whose learned and accomplished board members decide to produce on short notice in Central Park a performance of his genius work for cello and orchestra entitled "August's Rhapsody;" just so happens the cellist hired to perform the solo is - can you hear me now? - his mom, while - coincidentally enough - his Irish dad happens to be in town for a comeback performance of his band at a local venue. (Did I mention this was a fairy tale?)

Full credit to screenwriter Jim Hart (Bram Stoker's/Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula; Sahara; The Last Mimzy) and director Kristen Sheridan (um... Disco Pigs ?) for making it entirely possible to suspend disbelief in amongst all these harmonically convergent synchronicities. If you let yourself go with the flow of this film's goofy and infectiously optimistic storyline, you're liable to find yourself shedding some surreptitious sentimental tears in the darkened theater as the credits roll.

Now, back to those turkey leftovers. (Mmm... white meat!)