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STUDIO: Warner Brothers
MSRP: $28.98
RATED: PG
RUNNING TIME: 113 min
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Additional Scenes
The Pitch
Kids given up for adoption can only find their parents by playing music.
The Humans
Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell, Terence Howard, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, William Sadler and Robin Williams
Who’s ready for some ass pounding?
The Nutshell
August Rush is the tale of a young man who believes that his parents are still alive. So, he decides to escape from an upstate New York orphanage in order to find them. Meeting up with the Fagin style Wizard (Robin Williams), the young man is renamed August Rush and takes over the music world. Will the prodigy be exploited by the Wizard or will his parents find him? The excitement is killing me!
The Lowdown
The reason why I have seen every episode of Felicity and Into the West.
Kirsten Sheridan impressed the hell out of me with her scripting turn on the Oscar-nominated In America. Her work on this title feels like a chore. There’s a real talent to her writing, but it’s just not here. She’s plugged in as a director on a script that feels like it’s been sitting in the Warner Brothers can. There’s got to be something to this flick, doesn’t there?
August Rush takes melodrama to new levels, as it desperately tries to appease everybody with something. You get the kid power moments of August and the other kids busking on the streets of New York. There’s the limp romance between Meyers and Russell, as they work against the odds to reunite and discover love via the kid they gave up. If that wasn’t enough, you get the family friendly music that somehow managed to steal an Oscar nomination away from Eddie Vedder’s work in Into the Wild. But, what does it all mean?
They charge more than the kennel, but a pack animal is a pack animal.
The major failure of the film is the generic nature of the story. There’s nothing new here, as Oliver Twist and several other films are cribbed to give weight to this lackluster affair. Nothing really happens and there’s no reason to the madness. It’s an assembled mess of crap wrapped together by Freddie Highmore’s dwindling fifteen minutes of fame. I know that it’s not cool to shit on kid actors, but he’s blown it.
When I revisited this film on DVD, I was taken aback by how such a hackneyed story ruined what could’ve been a good film. Russell and Meyers tried their asses off to make this work. Keri Russell’s scenes stood out, as she bought into what could pass for a plot and she almost got me to believe her motivation. It’s just that I’ve seen the flick before under many different names. This incarnation of the latest crap melodrama adds nothing new to the mix.
RETURN!
The Package
August Rush comes to DVD with very supplements. You get some additional scenes that were cut out of the film for good reason. Some people might count the pan & scan transfer on the other side of the flipper disc as an added bonus. Those people are also cousin fuckers. Never trust the advice of a cousin fucker.
I know that he’s got as much fur as Fozzie Bear’s balls, but that soulpatch is stupid. Invest in a razor, Patch Adams.
The A/V Quality is decent for a recent theatrical release. You get very little digital noise on the transfer which only helps to show off the luscious scope cinematography. I’m not a big fan of John Mathieson’s work, but he has stepped up a notch. The Dolby 5.1 track pushes the music cues around the sound stage and really works the back channel. Little attention is paid to the subwoofer .1 channel, but it works for what it is.
In the end, August Rush is forgettable. Trying to find merit in a wham-bam movie will only with you a headache. So, put it back on the shelf and leave it for the curious crowds that somehow keep DTV sequels pouring out of the big studios. You can do a lot better as a consumer and as a human being.
I always make sure to scrawl out my guitar harmonics first, then I come up with a bitchin’ name.