![]() The music fills the space and draws the attention of a group of homeless people who have taken shelter in the church. As he enters the empty church, he is drawn to the piano and begins to play. In the scene, Evan has just arrived at the church and is seeking refuge from the rain. The song is an original composition by Mark Mancina and John Ondrasik and is featured on the film's soundtrack. One of the most memorable scenes in the film is when Evan, played by Highmore, performs the song "This Time" at a church. Along the way, Evan discovers his talent for music and uses it as a way to connect with his past and his family. The film follows the story of a young orphan named Evan Taylor, who is on a quest to find his parents. And if you'd still like to see Russell - a talented and fragile young actress - as a knocked-up young mother, rent her 2007 film "Waitress," soon out on DVD.īoth of those movies manage to hit warm notes without tossing out reality in the process.August Rush is a 2007 American drama film directed by Kirsten Sheridan and starring Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. If you're looking for a film more honest about music (also starring an Irish rocker), you're better off with "Once," the sensational indie flick from earlier this year. "August Rush" was directed by the Irish filmmaker Kirsten Sheridan, who was nominated for an Oscar with her father, Jim Sheridan, for penning the screenplay to 2002's "In America." She has seemingly only soaked up the most sentimental aspects of her father's work, which includes "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father." If any young parentless child were to take "August Rush" seriously, he or she would almost certainly wind up deluded by the most unlikely of dreams - and making a terrible racket, besides. The lesson of such triteness, though, is possibly dangerous. Eventually, his gift for music leads him to bigger stages and the chance for a family reunion. Rush soon falls in with Wizard and proves himself a music prodigy, beginning with playing guitar in a strange banging fashion that (impossibly) produces refined sounds. Dressed like Bono and working as what amounts to a pimp for child street musicians, Williams' wacky and creepy character is his biggest misstep since putting on a clown nose for "Patch Adams." ![]() Really, all you really need to know about "August Rush" is that Robin Williams plays a street musician named Wizard. Illogical circumstances and an absurdly overbearing father lead her to think the baby was lost during birth, so just over a decade later, she and her past lover are living lonely, separate lives. It leads to a single night of romance for these two: one a classical cellist, the other an Irish rocker (you can guess who's who).įate keeps the couple from meeting again, though Russell's character ends up pregnant. His mother (Keri Russell) and father (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) met on one fateful evening 12 years earlier when they were both drawn to a lone street musician playing Van Morrison's "Moondance" at the arch in New York's Washington Square Park. ![]() ![]() Meanwhile, interspersed flashbacks fill in his parents' story. He sneaks from his orphanage - where social worker Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard) is hoping to place him with a family - to New York City, where he soon picks up the name August Rush. Wide-eyed and impossibly innocent, this bite-sized Mozart embarks on a journey to find his parents with messianic certainty. Without any tangible evidence, our protagonist senses his parents are still alive and that he just needs to make music loud enough so they can hear him (sort of like the ethos behind a Coldplay album). "August Rush" thus proceeds in fairy-tale fashion, though it's more unrealistic than surrealistic. ![]() In a whispering voice-over, he says: "I believe in music the way that some people believe in fairy tales." "August Rush" begins with a boy (Freddie Highmore) standing in an open field where the surrounding sounds - the wind, the trees, the grass - swirl like a symphony in his head. We need to break out a whole new definition of cheesiness for a film like this, augmented by fake tears and vomit gestures. In this respect, "August Rush" is on another level. There are precious movies and then there are movies about 11-year-old orphans following "the music." Rated PG for some thematic elements, mild violence and language. Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Keri Russell, Freddie Highmore, Terrence Howard, and Robin Williams. ![]()
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