Film & Culture - “August Rush” Advanced Screening Review
Thursday night Kim & I joined eight friends for an advanced screening of the upcoming film “August Rush”. Having seen the trailers, I was cautiously hopeful about this one. Here’s the run down from Rotten Tomatoes:
“Freddie Highmore (CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY) stars as August Rush, a musically gifted boy who has spent his childhood in an orphanage. But August’s parents are alive, and he travels to New York City to perform and search for his mother and father (Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers). After earning an Oscar nod for the script for IN AMERICA, Kirsten Sheridan turns back to directing for this heartwarming drama. Robin Williams and Terrence Howard also star.”
The movie had moments of excellent cinematography, a better than average soundtrack and moments of what my friend Don might have called “Augustian” brilliance. If you are a fan for romantic love stories and enjoy tear jerkers now and again, you will likely enjoy this one. I have no doubt this film will make a fair box office hit for the American Thanksgiving weekend.
Now, everything I’ve said so far is true, but I admit that I am deliberately showing restraint. The fact is that I found myself frequently stiffling snickers throughout. The layers of cliches and syrupy sweet dialogue were frustrating in the face of a plot that might actually have had some real potential. Robin Williams shows up in a plot twist clumsily lifted from Oliver Twist (in a set that might have been lifted from “Hook”), failing to pull off his role as a semi-lovable, but dangerously flawed street performer. The last nail in the coffin for me was when, in all desperate seriousness one of the young supporting actors cried out in a loud voice:
“Run, August, run!”
Need I say more?
