Uplifting

Rating: 9/10 (24 November 2007)

August Rush is the most enjoyable film I've seen in months. It combines an updated version of Oliver Twist with the charm and whimsy of an old studio picture from the 1940s. The film is at times sad and moving, but like the Dickens novel it has a happy ending. The film is helped by its music, which is powerful and uplifting. The actors are attractive and likable, particularly the radiant Keri Russell and Freddie Highmore, gives a stunning performance in the title role.
The story starts with Lyla Novacek (Russell) a brilliant young cellist who has a one night stand with Louis Connelly, an Irish rock singer. Up to this point Lyla's life is manipulated by her ambitious father and the relationship with Connelly(Rhys Meyers)is broken up before it gets started. Lyla becomes pregnant but believes she has lost her unborn child in a car accident. She gives up performing. Years later Lyla's father makes a deathbed confession that he gave her son up for adoption. Her son Evan spends the first eleven years of his life in an orphanage. Lyla discovers the boy is alive and tries to find him.
Evan is sweet, vulnerable, trusting and optimistic. He runs away to New York and joins a gang of young musical street urchins. He's someone that belongs in a loving family. He is introduced to Wizard (Williams)who plays the film's Fagin. Evan turns out to be a musical genius and is renamed "August Rush" by Wizard who wants to exploit his talent. Meanwhile, Connelly who hasn't been able to recover from his rejection by Novavek, somehow ends up in New York at the same time. August runs away again and is discovered by the Julliard music department and composes a piece of music for a concert in Central Park. By coincidence, his mother is making a comeback. She performs Elgar's cello concerto with the New York Philharmonic at the same concert. The film follows a Dickensian formula with our hero having an incredibly tough time, but it all ends happily.