.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

It was about a month ago that I was sitting in the theatre watching the endless parade of trailers that the promo for August Rush previewed for the first time. The film looked like a honest to goodness-better than average tear jerker. Hell, it had Freddie Highmore who is just so damn cute he can make you cry just by simply staring and sulking at the camera. Add a story that was presented as boy meets girl, girl has baby, baby is put up for adoption, baby grows up and tries to find boy and girl who abandoned him years later, and it all seemed like a can't-lose proposition, just perfect for the sentimental holiday film crowd.

One month later, I headed out to see the preview screening with a pocket full of Kleenex just in case. Only thing is, by the time the lights were turned back on in the theatre and the patrons all began to grab their belongings, the only tears I was able to shed were the ones that came after thinking that I forked over an evening for this mindless crap.

August Rush stars Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as two young talented musicians for opposite sides of the tracks (she, the concert cellist, he the rock bad rebel). They meet one night at a party and have a sexual encounter that would later produce the character later to become known as August Rush as played by Highmore. After the encounter the two seem to wallow as if they found their true love in each other even if the entire affair lasted less than eight hours. Lyla (Russell) is forced to leave the city with her overbearing father and Louis (Myers) goes on with his life forever to mope about the girl he met one evening that changed his life forever. Gimmie a break.

Lyla just so happened to have gotten pregnant that one evening and some months later after a pedestrian accident, she is told by her father that her child perished and that her life must go on. Gimmie a second break.

Eleven years later, young Rush is staying at a orphanage where his tearful eyes project a sense of hope in a child determined that his parents are out there waiting for him to escape and find them. Adding to Rush's appeal is the fact that he is a musical prodigy. He can learn to play guitar in seconds and the piano in mere minutes. He learns how to write music in the time that it takes over a school recess. He is something that 60 Minutes would drool over - a true genius.

Only problem is - our attachment to any of the characters is so thin in weight that we don't really care if he finds his parents or not. We don't really care if he can write a musical number that will be played to thousands in Central Park. And we really don't care if the two parents ever see each other again. After all, eight hours on a rooftop swapping spit doesn't make for even the worst written Disney film.

And since we are on the topic of not caring, Robin Williams pops in for a role as The Wizard. Mr. Wiz is a former street entertainer that is more of an exploiter of children for money in his older years. The Wizard is a two faced hoodlum that is kind to his extended child family one moment but is throwing knives into their company the next. He is a distraction that seems to be part of the film just so that they could get Robin Williams' name on the poster. In short, he is a character annoying enough to skip on the DVD chapter selection while offering not much other than a guitar (which provided the best performance in the film) towards the overall plot development.

I've seen worse films this year. The Heartbreak Kid comes to mind immediately. But I haven't seen a film as disappointing based on the two minute trailer that whet my palate in hopes that it was a mix of Mr. Holland's Opus, Simon Birch and The Cider House Rules. Instead, I got something that tried too hard to be manipulative while ending up being like Chinese food where I was hungry just as soon as it finished.