I'm no cynic, but...

Rating: 5/10 (10 May 2011)

Now don't look at my like I'm someone who doesn't enjoy a heart-warming fairy tale! I thought AUGUST RUSH had the potential to be really good. The story was interesting, the movie looked decent, and the soundtrack was good. But wow! So much potential was lost in translation.
The story follows the Dickensean adventures of a young boy named Evan (Freddie Highmore). He's an orphan, but like most orphans in movies he knows that his parents are still alive. He's also born with an exceptional, yet to everyone else (of course) unusual, talent in music. Feeling lonesome and neglected, Evan goes searching for his parents in New York, where their fates meet many years ago. Turns out his parents are alive, but are also separated from each other and doesn't even know he's alive. Along the way, Evan stumbles upon a streetwise monger named Wizard (Robin Williams) who takes him in but sees his exceptional talents as profitable (he also changes his name to August Rush at this point). He also stumbles upon a church where the people there are also at awe with his talents. The film builds up about as fast as that summary I just wrote. Too fast! And that's the problem. How can we invest our emotions on an admittedly decent story if we can't even spend enough time to. One moment Dylan/August is an ambitious little performer, then he's suddenly a little celebrity in the hands of Wizard. One moment he just stumbles into a church, then faster than you can say "this phrase is so totally cliché" he's studying in Juilliard! Slow down movie! Granted there are a lot of plot points this movie has to go through (another problem), but moving at an all too rapid pace doesn't help. It never does! Then the story of Dylan/August also intercuts with the story of his parents, Lyla (Keri Russell) and Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), from that fateful night they met to a couple of years later until they realize that they actually have a son. And it does so pretty... badly. In fact, it actually becomes rather confusing in a while.
So with so much happening in the movie but very little time to care about them, AUGUST RUSH feels like a Hallmark TV movie rather than a really good fairy tale which it could have been. I'm all for a movie that doesn't try to be realistic and just goes for an artistic sensibility, but it's hard to care about it here. Granted, the performances are good, the camera work is decent, the soundtrack rather good actually, and like I said, I kinda liked the story. If the movie actually spent much of its time developing the story rather than getting them over with and move on to the next, it might have been great. This is one of those movies where I actually don't mind if it ran for an hour or so more, as long as the story is engaging and well-developed. There's just so much potential in it that I started picturing a different movie in my head while watching it. OK, I'm not boasting that I can do a better job, but if the movie can make me think I could then it's loosing my attention.
So AUGUST RUSH is not a bad movie, but it's a very maudlin, disappointing one. So much potential lost in execution.