Like the recent ‘Martian Child’, this well-meaning sugar high of a film is certainly not for cynics and will be a more tolerable watch in the presence of children and tweens who will respond to the predictable corniness with less world-weary eyes.
From Director Kirsten Sheridan, whose first film ‘Disco Pigs’ didn’t quite brace me for this sophomore effort, this ultra feel-good tale – ‘Oliver Twist’ meets ‘Once’ but not near as good – tells the fairy tale of our young narrator Evan (Freddie Highmore); an orphan surviving life at a New York boys home who refuses to accept that his parents are not waiting for him somewhere.
Told that his parents are still alive and musicians, he hears the everyday hum of life as music and thinks this magical hum will somehow connect him to his parents. You know that ‘Somewhere out there’ musical sequence from ‘An American Tale’?
Blow that up to two hours and make it even more cloying. Running away from the orphanage and the chance he’ll be adopted despite the best intentions of kind social worker Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard), Evan finds himself in the daunting, big-city hustle of Manhattan.
We flash back to 11 years earlier where a classy young cellist Lyla (Keri Russell) meets an Irish rock singer Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) on the roof of a building directly off Washington Square Park.
Immediately falling for each other under the New York City moon, they have a romantic night together and magically wake up fully clothed (within the PG guidelines) where a nasty fate intervenes and they don’t have a chance to meet gain.
When Lyla’s career controlling father (William Sadler) doesn’t want a baby to confuse things, an accident gives him the excuse to tell her the baby has died (as he secretly puts the baby up for adoption).
Back to the present, Evan befriends a streetwise performer Arthur (Leon G. Thomas III) who introduces him to the Fagin-like character Wizard (a particularly annoying Robin Williams by way of Bono).
Setting up a home for these wandering kids in an abandoned theater, Wizard sends out the kids with instruments to collect whatever street money they can get. When Evan gets hold of a guitar, he displays an impossible talent for it (no really, I mean impossible) and Wizard brands his new money maker ‘August Rush’.
Meanwhile, both Lyla and Louis still remember that fateful night together and both end up in New York at the same time. With an escapade at Julliard (don’t ask), Evan puts on a concert in Central Park but first has to escape the Wizard. Will this concert be the key to reconnecting with his parents?
If the sentimentality was downplayed just a bit, this could have stood a chance at being an effective film for both children and adults – as it stands, the most effective bits for me was the clever sound editing of everyday noises into a sort of musical rhythm. Not Koyaanisqatsi by any means but the film’s brightest spot nonetheless.
Freddie Highmore is okay in the role but he’s dangerously close to becoming the male Dakota Fanning – and his abundance of soggy fairy-tale pictures doesn’t help. From ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘Arthur and the Invisibles’, hearing him in ‘The Golden Compass’ to ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ – I say this kid needs a bit more diversity. The less said about Williams the better although Russell and Meyers make it out fairly unscathed despite zero chemistry.
Presented with both full-screen (for the fam!) and anamorphic widescreen versions, the lone special feature is a handful of necessary Deleted Scenes.
Probably an easy watch for the whole family or less cynical moviegoers (hi, mom!), this flick is an unabashedly old-fashioned tear-jerker with enough corn and schmaltz to survive a Southern Baptist cookout. Eye-rollers like myself? Nothng to see here, move along.
