Really wanted to like it

Rating: 3/10 (18 April 2020)

I really did. And I really just didn't like it. At all. I appreciated the acting performances but that was about it. The premise sounded promising; brings musician myself, I thought I would love a movie about a child musical prodigy.
But here's the problem. As a musician, what was in the movie simply doesn't happen. Someone can't beat the strings of a guitar one time, re-tune the guitar, and then start playing beautiful music in a way nobody ever had before. It left the stratosphere of believability. It was to the point that I was irritated watching it unfold.
Ok, as some say, "but it's meant to be kind of a fairy tale!"
I like a good fairy tale. I do. I liked the Wizard of Oz. One of my all time favorites is a modern fairy tale, Tim Burton's Big Fish. But August Rush was not presented as such. It was presented as though we are expected to believe it. The presentation of such a story in that way just didn't work for me.
And sorry to blow the ending (hence the spoiler alert) but a boy playing music does not magically somehow call his estranged parents to be with him. It is such a bizarre concept, in a realistically presented movie that it really left me shaking my head and wishing I had just watched something else.
So if you're a musician, please skip it. You'll undoubtedly hate it. If you require any semblance of believability whatsoever in a plot if a movie, skip it. You won't like it either. But it's rating us in the mid 7's right now. So apparently a lot of people do.
I really don't know who those people are.