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PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 11/26/07)

Eleven year-old orphaned musical genius Evan (Finding Neverland's Freddie Highmore) takes a break from his jaw-dropping instrumental riffs on a guitar called Roxanne — an ability he picked up only a few days prior — to chat with Wizard (Robin Williams), the Fagin to Evan's modern-day Oliver Twist. In that role, Wizard offers his charge a corner of Central Park and half the tips — but he is aware that a talent as big as Evan's won't be contained to performances on a park bench for very long. A new name, Wizard suggests, is what Evan needs. A green truck emblazoned with a poster of white sands and palm trees with the words "August Rush to the Beach: Get Ready for the Summer Heat" whizzes past. And so Evan is christened with his new name by this tacky impresario with a bad dye-job.

This is but one of many arbitrary-in-logic-yet-key-to-the-plot scenes that litter the fabled landscape of this cloying musical homage to one of Dickens' greatest novels. We are introduced to Evan in a field of tall swishing green grass. "I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales," he offers in voiceover. With his head raised to the sky and his hands swaying, Evan is, it seems, directing the forces of nature. We are meant to believe that Evan's finely tuned hearing enables him to locate rhythm and melody in any random place where almost any noise is to be heard. It could be a traffic-congested street or the beating of a bird's wings. "It is all around us. All you have to do is listen," he says later, dropping another insightful pearl of wisdom. As if the unique gift of musical genius were not enough of a burden to bear, Evan was placed in an orphanage at birth. However, without any discernable shred of evidence to support his belief, he is doggedly sure that the parents he has never known are out there searching for him.

Through flashbacks, we learn his parents had met a little over a decade before at a party. She (Russell) was a talented young cellist, and he (Rhys-Meyers) was a budding rock singer in a band. Evan was conceived to the sounds of a street performer on a Washington Square rooftop crooning Van Morrison's Moondance, but when his mother went into early labor and Evan was born, he was snatched from her and secretly put up for adoption by his grandfather, who believed motherhood would interfere with his daughter's blossoming musical career. Bear in mind here that this is not Dickensian London circa 1840, but Chicago in the late 1990s.

A socially awkward kid with the street smarts of a chipmunk, Evan bravely breaks out of his prison-like children's home and heads for the Big City. He quickly hooks up with a gang of street kids that busk for money during the day and hang out nights in an ornate abandoned theatre where he falls prey to the forceful and beguiling Wizard, the gang's paternal protector. Wizard is well known to Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard), a social worker looking for young Evan. Again, should we not pause and ask: If a social worker knew that a creepy character like Wizard was exploiting kids for cash, would he not have been picked up by cops long ago? Regardless, August Rush quickly goes on to Julliard and as a first-year student composes a rhapsody that will be performed by the New York Philharmonic in Central Park. But his greatest hope is that his performance will be heard by his long-lost Mom and Pop. They, of course, would both need to be drawn at the same time to the Great Lawn at the very moment he steps foot onto the stage with his director's baton. What are the odds of that?

Terms like "fairy tale" and "magical realism" have been applied to this uneven and hackneyed story, and the audience is expected to suspend disbelief on one-too-many occasions. And even in the context of a fable, the plausibility of this plot begins to wear thin. However, a few gems stand out. Eleven-year-old Jamia Simone Nash's scenes with Highmore are pitch-perfect in their comedic timing, and when she sings, you are compelled to take note. Composer Marc Mancina's musical score is a complex threading of captivating currents that also impress. And for those who loved his singing in Velvet Goldmine, Rhys-Meyers once again proves that he has pipes. August Rush may resonate with fans of sentimental tearjerkers and soppy musical dramas, but the rest of us will hope this film rushes to its predictable conclusion.

— Karl Rozemeyer