A complete heap of rubbish

Rating: 2/10 (19 March 2008)

I give it 2 stars out of 10. One star for the minimum score that you get for being a movie, and one star for Jamia Simone Nash singing. The rest of it was terrible.
Maybe I am biased because of the man in the theatre who snored for the last half of it (nobody had the heart to wake him up, and he probably enjoyed his two hours more than the rest of us). To begin with, the plot is ridiculous. The story is taken directly from Oliver Twist, but the actual events, it isn't even believable in the fairytale context that it is told.
The central love story is based on a night of rooftop sex with strangers who have about 3 minutes of the corniest lines I could possibly come up with before going at it like guinea pigs in heat: Who are you Lyla?" She pauses, smiles then looks off in the distance, "I'm just.. me." And it just goes on and on like that.
The rest of the movie is filled with similar vomit inducing dialogue; I don't know how many times "You've got to believe in your music" was repeated.
Most of the characters are cardboard cutouts: There's rich cellist girl with overbearing father, brooding punk rocker, inner city black kid who talks just like you'd expect, and perpetually dazed and confused skinny white kid who gets picked on but always follows his dream.
The cinematography is mostly boring and standard, what you might see in a car commercial or something similarly mundane. The music isn't bad, but whenever it come on, it sidetracks the movie for another 5 minutes rather than contributes to it.
Lastly, I found the movie incredibly racist as well. If you are white, you fall in love, follow your dreams and go to Juilliard. You might fall on tough times and meet some black people, but you will be later raised up to the position that you deserve. If you are black, you can be a social worker or a panhandler, and sleep in a church or a condemned theatre.