Biggest Disappointment in Years for me

Rating: 2/10 (27 March 2010)

Okay, somebody please tell me why so many people raved about "August Rush"?????
I watched it last night with great expectations and simply wanted it to end.
When it started I loved the approach, the way it was layered and shot and delivered and I settled in thoroughly anticipating a wonderfully crafted movie, ESPECIALLY since I'm a guitarist.
And I DID enjoy it up to the point where Evan/August enters the abandoned theatre with the black kid and - oh my goodness!- not only does the condemned building have fully functioning electricity and lights - but just happens to be infested with nothing but musical prodigies and the mandatory taskmaster, Robin Williams. Okay, I thought, I'll accept this absurdity and suspend my grasp on reality for a moment. But from that point on the movie decided to enter into fantasyland. No one... I mean NO ONE - EVER - has picked up a guitar or piano with zero instruction and zero experience and started playing the way he did MUCH LESS write a freakin' symphony. Okay, I know it's a movie, but I can only suspend belief so far. Then began the ridiculous way every single event just happened to come together: - His mom just happening into the one single right child services office where the one single social worker just happened to be that knew Evan/August (oh, and do we even need to mention the supposedly 'dying' father - who didn't look too sick to me - telling her about the baby, which I kind of doubt any dad who was as controlling as hers was would ever do?) - the ex-boyfriend deciding to get on a plane to New York and, by golly, gee whiz, ending up at the right concert at the right time just a few feet away from the woman he met 10 years ago, spent ONE FRIGGIN' NIGHT WITH, and never forgot. - And oh yeah, BTW, they recognized each other immediately because, of course, they didn't happen to AGE any in 10 years! - And the mandatory angst moment when Robin Williams happens to find August at the exact right time to coerce him away from the symphony and back into the streets.
Give me a break. I mean, really. This movie could have been magnificent. Instead, it took a wonderful idea and moved from a solid beginning premise into an absurd manufacturing of events in order to complete an unlikely and mostly unbelievable story.
Good soundtrack though.