August Rush

Yesterday afternoon, I settled down into the basement with my parents to watch a movie. My brothers were out and about, playing with the neighborhood kids and so what do we decide to watch? August Rush, an amazing movie rated PG.

The basic storylines of this movie is that a kid named Evan Taylor who runs away from a boy's home and ends up in New York (it is where the music leads him). He meets a kid named Arthur and a man named Wizard (and other, name-less characters) and discovers he has a huge musical talent. There is also the story of his parents, Lyla and Louis, who meet one night while both escaping a party and they fall in love and make a baby. In the present, while Evan (their son) is in NYC, they are in Chicago and San Francisco, unaware of the whereabouts of the other, being sad and not musical anymore, until Lyla decides she wants to find her son after news from her father and Louis wants to find Lyla after reuniting with people from his old band.

There are many moments in this movie that makes you want to yell and scream at the characters and their circumstances because they are SO CLOSE to the truth and yet so far. But there are many sweet moments, many cute moments and many heart-wrenching moments. If you happen to have a heart, you might want a box of tissues. But, as you can predict from the PG rating, everything is happy at the end. But instead of having a cliche vocal-realization moment or a cheesy epilogue, the film has a very classy finish with an unspoken acknowledgment between Lyla, Louis and Evan.

But because this movie is basically half-a-musical, there are many songs to be had. And they are amazing! Some of things Evan/August does with the guitar is magical and many of the vocal performances are terrific. The cello parts with Lyla are also incredible. I don't know of Freddie Highmore (Evan/August), Keri Russell (Lyla) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Louis) actually did their instrumenal or vocal performances, but if so, they are outstanding. (I personally don't doubt Meyers' performance, but I doubt that Freddie Highmore is truly a musical prodigy and that Keri Russell has been a life-long cellist, but it's a vague possiblity.)