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It’s a fairy tale in two parts, the first act is a brief, but intense love story – where Lyla (Keri Russell) and Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) are young lovers that have one night of bliss and then are kept apart by Lyla’s selfish father (William Sadler) – might as well call him the Evil One. They have a baby that Louis knows nothing about and Lyla is told she lost during childbirth after an accident (which is not true) – but they all sadly go their separate ways.
In the second act, the "young prince" has been taken away from his beloved parents and sent to the heartless orphanage system for 11 years. Then Evan (Freddie Highmore) escapes and follows the music he hears to New York City, hoping it will lead to the two people who gave him the gift of music. Instead, he meets a bizarre family of street musicians browbeaten by the Wizard (Robin Williams), who looks an awful lot like a homeless, meaner version of Bono. The Wizard gives Evan a guitar to play and a new name (August Rush) but turns out to be the Second Evil One (Evil Two?). If there’s a fairy godmother caseworker in this tale, it would have to be Richard (Terrence Howard), who has really good intentions of reuniting a mother and son, but needs some help. The music takes August to the great Emerald City (known here as Julliard), but will it lead him home?
In a fairy tale, you know there will be a predictable ending and that there are going to be lots of coincidences that you just have to accept as part of the magic that brings the characters all to the same place at just the right moment. But here, something happens every other scene that’s so farfetched that you have to ignore or it will take you out of the movie and unfortunately, the story doesn’t have quite enough enchantment to get past all of that.
Lyla and Louis aren’t together long enough in the beginning to establish a love of a lifetime (or even a love of the month). The film tries to make up for this by cutting between their separate lives, but it only shows that they’re not happy, not that they’re still pining over a one-night-stand 11 years later (which is a really long time to pine).
Still, there are a lot of moments that work on that fable level: when August hears Hope (Jamia Simone Nash) sing, the concert in the park, or the first time August plays the guitar, which is both unique and wonderful. You can forgive a lot because it’s a feel-good kind of story. It helps that Keri Russell is ideal for a fairy tale mother, Jonathan Rhys Meyers has the look of a rock star (and an Irish brother who’s also easy on the eyes), and Freddie Highmore has as much charm as little orphan Annie ever imagined and he deserves to have very special parents. The real magical element here is the music – from start to finish it’s simply fabulous.
© 2007 Warner Bros. - All rights reserved
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