Movie Review: August Rush

All right, where do I start with this movie? I thought that most of it didn’t make any sense at all!

Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) lives in an orphanage and he claims that he can hear the music in almost everything. He also believes that he will find his parents again. If they don’t find him, he’ll set out to find them himself. The other boys in the orphanage are aghast with his peculiarity but he remains firm with what he believed in.

Then, we will watch a flashback of what happened 11 years ago. Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell) is a gifted cellist while Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a singer in a band. They happened to meet at a party on a rooftop and slept with each other. After that, due to unforeseen circumstances, they never see each other again. Lyla becomes pregnant and is constantly being pressured by her strict father to give up the baby. Later when the baby was born, Lyla’s father gave the baby up for adoption without her knowing. Instead, he told her that the baby did not survive.

Louis, on the other hand, has no clue of all the drama in Lyla’s life. He is miserable in his own life too, being unhappy that he couldn’t meet Lyla again. After that, he stopped singing and took up another job where he got to wear expensive suits and ride in expensive cars. He found a new girlfriend too, Jen (Becki Newton) but apparently doesn’t tell her much about himself.

And then back to the present. Evan finally decides to run away from the orphanage in search for his parents. He then meets Arthur who was singing on the streets and tells Arthur that he has no place to stay. Arthur brings Evan back to Wizard (Robin Williams), an eccentric man who loves music too. Wizard then makes Evan change his name to August Rush because it sounds better than plain Evan Taylor. He was probably afraid that somebody might find Evan and bring him back to the orphanage.

Now this kinds of reminds me of Oliver Twist! Instead of picking pockets and bringing the money back to Fagin, the kids in Wizard’s clan perform in the streets and bring back their earnings to him.

Now why did I say that this movie doesn’t make sense? First, Lyla and Louis barely knew each other. They were already sucking face after less than ten minutes of knowing each other. After their one night stand, they still can’t forget each other and you can see that they haven’t really moved on in their lives. They were still pining for each other.

Secondly, wow, is Evan really that talented? He has possibly never seen any music notes in his life but after a brief music lesson, he managed to compose something magnificent. Okay, so he’s a child prodigy but that was quite hard to believe. Anyway, that scene was interesting, where he was writing out music notes as if that’s what he did every day when it was actually his first time.

I still enjoyed this film despite its ridiculous storyline. Rhys Meyers is gorgeous. Girls will enjoy looking at him. He also sings in the movie! Yeah, a chance for you to drool over him. Freddie Highmore was quite okay as young Evan Taylor and as a weirdo who loses himself in the music he hears most of the time.

But I was disappointed that they didn’t show what happened to Arthur and Wizard in the end. The movie ended way too soon. They should at least have told us what Arthur and Wizard have become.