An Insult To Anyone's Intelligence

Rating: 2/10 (27 March 2008)

I was more-than-willing to give this a good shot and enjoy a nice feel-good film starring the likable Freddie Highmore ("Charlie," of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" fame). However, when I start hearing 10- year-old uneducated street urchins talking with vocabularies like college professors and saying things that no little kid would say, I get turned off. Add to that more Hollywood politically-correctness and low morality.....and so much for the nice, feel-good story.
The sweet-looking "good girl" of the story meets a guy on the roof of a building, sleeps with 20 minutes later. They agree to meet somewhere the next day but her parents whisk her back to where she came from, and the two don't connect. Nine months later the baby arrives right when the mother has a car accident. The father says the kid died but really he had given the boy to child services.
Meanwhile, the boy - now 11 and living in an orphanage - runs off to New York City somehow figuring that magically, through hearing music, he'll meet his parents. Sound a little far out? Yeah, it is, and even more so as you see if play out.
It's a nice message of young boy never losing faith that he would meet his parents some day but the way he eventually does is so ridiculous, so far out, so unrealistic.....that it insults your intelligence. This turns out to be an Oliver Twist wannabe that isn't even close to the latter in quality and believability. Robin Williams as a "wizard" ("Fagin" in "Oliver Twist") ought to tell you something.
Meanwhile, "Evan" (Highmore) meets up with this street kid ("Arthur," played by Leon Thomas) is verbally annoying as hell...and things progress from there. There are so many plot holes and contrivances in this film, you couldn't count them all. Examples? Well, the kid learns about sheet music one day and two hours later he's written compositions that would make Beethoven proud. Later, he gets accepted to the Julliard School of Music despite the fact he has no credentials or background on who he is and where he's from!!
If you have any brain at all, this movie is a slap-in-the-face to you.