August Rush (2007)
Tim (2 stars) - On a two day rough streak with movies. I had seen previous for this movie and had hopes that it would be good. I was sadly disappointed. The whole movie is based on the premise that music can bring people together and the music that August has a Mozart-like gift for will lead him to his parents. His mother (Keri Russell) thought he had died when he was born, but her father actually put the child up for adoption because he didn't want to interrupt her career as a classical cellist. How someone can be allowed to put a baby up for adoption without the mother knowing is beyond me, but then so are a lot of other things in this movie. Robin Williams is horribly, horribly miscast as this sleazy man who commands a group of talented parentless children who work the streets of NYC playing songs and bring him home the profits. He is basically their pimp and a lot of the movie centers around how the young prodigy, August, can get away from him after he has escaped from a boarding school and no one seems to be that concerned about where he his. Along the way, he inexplicably gets accepted to the Julliard School of Music and is chosen to compose a piece in the summer concert that his mother is also playing at. The rest, as they say, is history.
Liz (2 stars) The concept for this movie sounded strange to me when it first came out- an orphan finds his birth-parents through the power of music... It sounded strange and it was strange...
Two musicians, (Keri Russell) a cellist and (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) a rocker, meet on one fateful night, fall in love, conceive a child, and then somehow never see each other again. For her, because her father won't let her and for him- I'm not sure why... He's too busy with his band and being depressed about not being with her?
Anyway, their son, that he doesn't know about and she thinks died is now about 11 and is an orphan musical prodigy. He decides to run away to NYC where he will use music to find his parents. In the meantime, he meets a creepy man named "Wizard" (played by Robin Williams) who takes in runaway kids that are musically talented and makes them play for money on the streets and then takes their money. The Robin Williams character was truly bizarre.
August, (who's real name is Evan, but Robin Williams changes it to August Rush?) can play every instrument he picks up and eventually somehow even attends Julliard. He is desperate to find his parents through his music, even though he has no idea that his parents are even musicians. Of course the mother has found out he is alive and is looking for him, and his father is looking for his mother... SPOILER ALERT: Will they find each other? Perhaps during August's Julliard concert? Hmmm, that would tie it up nicely... I've read that this movie was supposed to be like a modern day fairy tale. It didn't work. Trust me, I like a good romantic fairytale, but something in this just didn't click.
No comments:
Post a Comment