Horrible Storytelling

Rating: 2/10 (31 March 2008)

This is an absolutely awful movie. The plot hinges on one unbelievable act after another. (The first being that a concert cellist would climb a ladder in an expensive dress to sit on a brick wall with a man she had just met.) It goes downhill from here.
The scene in which New York becomes basically one big Stomp performance went on too long. (I got it, already!). The mid-section is an over-stylized ripoff of Oliver Twist and Robin Williams should be ashamed (if he has any sense of shame left after all the stinkers he's been in!) for taking money for this project.
The musical genius of the boy is a slap in the face to any human being who ever tried to learn music or an instrument. (I can ALMOST go along with the guitar playing -- although slapping a guitar with open tunings and harmonics doesn't really count as guitar playing.) The hoary old cliché of the misplaced vital document shows up here, but one of the most egregious (I almost said the most, but there are so many candidates for that title in this film) devices in the entire film revolves around the likelihood that A: someone could actually get to the front of the stage in Central Park from the back in the same night, B: that 'mom' and 'dad' would recognize each other simply because they are within 20 people of each other, and C: that the kid would just instinctively KNOW that his parents happened to show up right then and there without even looking behind him.
Sorry. I like magic as much as the next person and I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, but at least give me a reason to do so; don't make me look like a sap for going along with a plot that would have been rejected in any writing school or film school in the country.
I do not understand how this movie was given a green light. Yuk!