Review of August Rush (2007) by Path. — 29 Oct 2008

The people who don't understand why others criticize this movie have no idea how musically ignorant they are. What this movie does, in close up scenes repeatedly, is to make mistakes and gaffes so impossible that the child would have to not just be a music prodigy, he'd also have to be psychic, possessed or reincarnated to know things that people must learn, but can't do off of natural talent.

It's possible he could PLAY well naturally, but writing sheet music with special symbols and unnatural things that are learned and man-made? Impossible. Also, there are close-ups where the music makes such obvious mistakes (not only something a nerd would get, but ANYONE who's ever taken even 1 or 2 classes or even a month of lessons) like the sheet music he wrote had three of the same note written when what he played went up (don't even bother with far up) yet the music that sounded had him playing notes that went down! 3 discrepencies in a scene that didn't even have to happen if there weren't an arrogantly ignorant closeup.

Basically, it's like a basketball movie where somebody plays basketball with just their pinkies, they throw the ball the opposite direction of the basket, yet it magically turns into a 3 point swish, or a baseball movie where somebody walks up and hits a home run with a corn-cob pipe and magically understands ump signals with no prior knowledge.

In other words, this movie is UNWATCHABLY bad to anyone even a wee bit musical. Worse than the acting in any Prince film. It makes Under the Cherry Moon look like a documentary. It's such a piece of crap, that I felt guilty for hating it.

And I believed in Santa til I was 14, but I couldn't stop being distracted by lies, gaffes and nonsense for even the first 20 minutes.