"August Rush" (2007) - Movie Review

“August Rush” is a hallmark cheesy card. We acknowledge when some one gives on the nature of the gesture rather than the card itself. I was not able acknowledge because I was in the paying end and I deserve better for my 7$. I remember seeing “I am David” and how much I was trying to like it and its fiasco of letting me down till the last screen shot of it. “August Rush” starts with a very promising note of how the two people Lyla (Keri Russell) and Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) blend in their music by kind of telepathic feeling through their music. Then it carries on with people staring at the skies, closing up the kid’s eyes and some very badly written clichéd dialogues to make this sporadic musical film into a very ordinary and a boring one in the end.

Evin (Freddie Highmore) believes he can hear music in anything and everything around him. When he composes the grasses over the corn field and it dances around his waving of small hands depicts on what he believes. His voice over tells what he feels and how he connects with his long last parents whom he had never seen or seem to know. In their one night discovery of true love (duh!), Lyla a classical Cellist and Louis a rock band singer gets separated by a stubborn father of Lyla (a big duh!). It would have been 1995 but cell phone, internet seem to be non-existent and Louis never tries to meet the “love of his life” until after 11 years and some months and some days, sorry “I did not count”.

The lameness starts out there and beats us cutting every shot to these three characters that desperately need to look into the “lost & found” section in the three cities they jump around, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Fresh are some of the scenes and some are enjoyable too. I vehemently oppose using a sweet kid’s face as an emotional spectacle and leveraging the though of cinematic punch points. I wishfully want a non-sweet kid and more of terrific acting. Freddie Highmore does the job director Kirsten Sheridan has wanted to, be sympathetic, pale and smile as the cherubic kid every one wants to look at. But Sheridan uses that as the only corner stone even more than the music at times which they movie preaches.

I give in to the belief of people having that extra telepathic perception. In recent days, I have started to vaguely understand the nature of unexplainable force and bond connecting every one in the world. Quite cheesy but appears to have some feeble sense in reality. The power of consoling, comforting and even completely blowing away the art of manipulating has something more to do than the way some one looks, talk or acts. Having try to be in the Zen zone, there is only very little effort to convince some one like me and if they can fail in that, then I would say that the film lacks a lot as a natural musical representation.

Composer Marc Mancina seems to have been working on the score for the past one and half years. It is that which makes the routine scenes liven up to the fanciness it boasts. The songs faded away though. The first one was the best which I can very well be in my iTunes buying list of songs. And the dialogues, some thing like this, “What are you looking at?” and the reply of “You”. “You look crazy” and the reply of “I am Crazy” makes you think that the director read “Good dialogues beaten to death” by “Always thinking it will work directors”.

Music on the screen is a tricky subject and having seen this movie and couple of others, I can appreciate how much the movies in my native language have those challenges in front of them. When you see the trailer and poster of “August Rush” and the kid’s face, you go in with the full notion of liking the film. You know the steps and just sit back and enjoy it. When some one during that process laughs at my spending of ticket money and call me a loser, you know what, that hurts. More than the kid’s pain in the film of not finding his parents.