"The music is all around you, all you have to do is listen."

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2008)

This is another one of those movies where you either get it or you don't. It is not an epic. It is a fable. And what a fable it is! This is a story about the rhythms of life, about the crossings and re-crossings our paths have with one another, and how the ordinary hustle and bustle of everyday life can have its own orchestral quality and sound. Finally, it is a story about faith. If you believe and love something strongly enough it will become the reality. Here, that "karma" (for the lack of a better word) was out in spades.
August Rush (Evan Taylor in the first part of the movie) is the abandoned child of a chance meeting and momentary love affair between two accomplished musicians. He is convinced that his parents are out there looking for him and will eventually find him. He hears their music in the grass, the rain and the high-tension wires. Consequently, he is the subject of ridicule by the other children at the orphanage.
Finally he runs away knowing he must, and will, find his parents. In an obvious nod to Oliver Twist, he has various adventures of a musical nature, wherein the Fagin and Artful Dodger characters are also musicians, that eventually lead him to Julliard School of Music--it turns out he is, after all, a musical prodigy--and a major concert in New York's Central Park.
In a subtle hint at the interconnectedness of it all, we learn later that the Fagin character (played by Robin Williams) was the harmonica playing musician in New York's Washington Square playing Van Morrison's "Moondance" on the night that August's parents met. Meanwhile, his musician parents, whose lives have become dull and meaningless (and without music) since they were rudely separated by her father, "pick up the vibes" of their son's quest and slowly return to their musical roots. And here, in another obvious nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, all three are mysteriously drawn to that concert in Central Park.
Something must also be said about the soundtrack to this movie. It is very innovative and impressive. Jonathan Rhys Meyers has a surprisingly good voice. Leon Thomas and Jamia Simone Nash turn in amazing performances. The final concert piece played at Central Park is near overwhelming. This is one of the few times where I would actually recommend purchasing the CD.
Some reviewers have complained that the characters lack depth or that the plot is scattered. But that is often the way with fables. We are never told, for example, the name of the mouse who takes the thorn out of the lion's paw, or the name of the fox who can never reach those allegedly sour grapes. We are to learn the lesson within the fable.
And here the lesson is both simple and profound. As August says at the beginning and the end of the movie, "The music is all around you, all you have to do is listen." Some may think the idea too schmaltzy or New Agey. But for me it is simply a way of telling us that God really does exist and that he really does love us all.