(114 min, 2007)Director: Kirsten Sheridan
Writers: Nick Castle (screenplay), James V. Hart (screenplay)
Stars: Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Saccharine sounds
As a romantic, I love heartwarming movies and fairy tales - I believe in soapy stuff like soul mates, destiny, love at first sight - it's rare, but one can't be sure it doesn't happen. But I hate too much sugar and sweetness and there is such thing as too much sentimentality in a film - „August Rush” is an example of the sentimentality and sweet lovey dovey moments in such concentration it will make you nauseous, maybe even sick to the point you fast forward.
The story goes like that – Lyla, violinist and Louis, singer for rock band spend the night together and fall in love. The boy is not right for her according to her dad, so their ways part. But a child is born some time later and because of lies and intrigue Lyla doesn't know it is alive. 11 years later that child uses music to find his parents.
The child, named Evan has a wondrous music gift and can create symphonies out of nowhere – too bad that, except for the last few moments in the movie, those symphonies of his sounded more like irritating noise to me. I never thought I'm going to say that but „The Soloist” puts this movie to shame in this area. And „The Soloist” is an awful movie. Plus the amazing gift to create music subplot doesn't even work here - it's too absurd. When you are watching a movie like this you are supposed to automatically buy the things you see. When I was watching "Perfume" I didn't have to wonder why Grenouille had this amazing gift of hightened scent, I just kept watching the movie without any "but how?". Here not only I couldn't listen to that "music" without cringing, its origin - which basically was, what? God, magic, unicorns and rainbows? - puzzled me throughout the film.
