Liked this movie a lot!

Rating: 9/10 (18 October 2012)

Well I really liked this movie a lot. It was generally very well done and I even was able to get over the fact that they cast Robin Williams (why? why?) in it. I generally love stories where a kid gets lost and is somehow saved by someone who loves/finds/runs into them.
And how can you not love Keri Russel. She's awesome.
I would give this movie a 10 but there are two somewhat serious drawbacks.
Well my first issue is not that major but, really, it is a problem that I think everyone seeing this movie would notice. When the boy is "discovered" by the reverend and is taken to Juliard, we are expected to believe that Juliard, a top of world music/arts school for gifted children, would just take in a kid without any documentation of who he is? That simply is not believable. They require parental permission and signatures, etc. Sure they'd want him but they would so incredibly liable if they did what they did in the movie. I know it would sort of destroy the ENTIRE plot if that didn't happen like that and that's sort of my complaint. As a writer, you shouldn't have to box yourself into such a bad plot miss in order to make your story work. Shakespeare always made every thing work, brilliantly. With a little more effort, you could have too!
Second, the ending was a real letdown. I don't think the writer fully understood his movie to be honest. I know things get complex in movie making with writers, producers, directors and editors all having a say in what ends up being the movie but for me they really, really blew this one.
OK, what I'm about to write is a major, end of the movie spoiler. I've already marked this review as a spoiler but if you really don't want to know the end, don't continue reading! :)
The movie ends with the boy on stage looking at his parents and then in his mind narrating some trite comment about the grandness of music, vision etc. This is what I mean about the writer not understanding this movie. Repeatedly throughout the movie, he tries to interject a narrative of spiritual feeling ideas about music being almost godlike. Yet the movie as you see it on screen takes on a totally different life. The music really becomes - and I might add the word 'merely' to qualify becomes - the vehicle to achieve the overarching theme of the movie - the love of a boy for his parents and the love of a mother for her son being so strong that they persevere 12 years to find each other at last.
Music really was incidental to that real goal, as the boy repeatedly states in the movie that his ONLY concern is to be reunited with his mother/parents. The music to him was merely the vehicle to see that happen.
So we get to the finale, and everyone watching the movie wants there to be a huge reunion with hugs and many tears - which if it was me separated from my son for 12 years, I would have leaped onto the stage!
But no. We get no completion and are only left with empty, trite words about some new-age idea about music.
No hugs, no tears, no explanations back and forth between the 3 miraculously reunited, no resolution.