Review of August Rush (2007) by Chads. — 24 Jan 2008

Any movie(it's too late for "August Rush") should reconsider the use of interior dialogue if its narrator is going to deliver self-consciously poetic observations in an insufferably wan voice.

More importantly, a movie should find out how the real world works. "August Rush" wants us to believe that a hospital would conspire with a father into telling his teenage daughter that her child didn't survive the delivery.

Uh-huh. Right. Evan(Freddy Highmore) survived. He's a music prodigy, but "August Rush" conceals his gift for a good portion of its running time. When Evan says, "I hear music," we think it's his long-lost parents' music he's remembering; a preternatural awareness that they were once musicians.

Since the music he hears is probably his own, "August Rush" misdirects its audience into mystical overkill (Lyla, played by Keri Russell, provides enough mysticism), and gives the film a new age-y vibe that falls on the wrong side of precious serendipity.

At one point in "August Rush", Evan turns into Bjork, when he walks down a busy street and interprets industrial noise as Selmasongs just like the Icelandic siren in Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark"(the factory cacophony just before "Cvalda" is performed).

"August Rush" is so full of magic, you wish it would disappear.