August Rush

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August Rush
Theatrical release poster
Directed byKirsten Sheridan
Written byNick Castle
James V. Hart
Paul Castro
Produced byRichard Barton Lewis
StarringFreddie Highmore
Keri Russell
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
with Terrence Howard
and Robin Williams
CinematographyJohn Mathieson
Edited byWilliam Steinkamp
Music byMark Mancina
Distributed byWarner Bros. (USA)
Entertainment Film Distributors (UK)
Release date
November 21, 2007
Running time
114 minutes
CountryTemplate:FilmUS
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25,000,000 (est.)
Box office$66,121,062[1]

August Rush is a 2007 American drama film directed by Kirsten Sheridan and written by Paul Castro, Nick Castle, and James V. Hart, and produced by Richard Barton Lewis. It has been referred to as an up-to-date reworking of the Oliver Twist story by Charles Dickens.[2]

Plot

12-year-old Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) grows up an outcast in a home for boys, all the while believing that his parents are alive. He can hear music in everything: the light, the wind, rustling leaves. He believes that he can hear the music from his parents. He believes that they always wanted him and would come and get him someday.

He meets a social service worker, Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard), of the New York Child Services Department. Evan tells him he does not want to be adopted. Jeffries likes Evan and gives him his card. He wants Evan to confide in him if the need should ever arise.

Through a series of flashbacks, Evan's parents are revealed to be Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), a famous teenage concert cellist, and Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irish guitarist and lead singer of a rock band. They met at the same party and spent a romantic night together. Due to Lyla's strict father, Lyla was unable to meet Louis where she'd agreed to and they parted, apparently never to see each other again.

Lyla became pregnant with their child. Her father did not approve of this, wanting instead for Lyla to have a successful career without the obstacle of a child. After an argument with her father, Lyla ran out of a restaurant and was hit by a car. While in the hospital, she gave birth to a son. The last thing she was aware of was the nurses telling her that the baby's heartbeat was falling. When she wakes, her father implies that the child didn't make it. Unbeknownst to her, the baby survived and her father had forged her signature on the adoption papers. Both Louis and Lyla gave up their performing careers after losing each other, and neither was aware of their son's existence.

Evan has a very strong faith that if he could learn to play the music, he will have a chance to be found by his parents. He believes that they will hear him. So he runs away to New York City, in the process losing Jeffries' card. He meets Arthur (Leon G. Thomas III), a pre-teen street-corner guitarist, playing in Washington Square Park. He follows Arthur home and is taken in by Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace (Robin Williams), who houses various orphans and runaways, teaching and employing them to play music on the streets and taking a large cut of their tips. Evan immediately proves to be a musical child prodigy. Wizard enlists him and gives him the name "August Rush", convincing him he will be sent back to the orphanage if his real name is ever discovered.

Lyla only discovers that her son is alive when her father, on his deathbed, confesses what actually happened. Lyla immediately sets out to New York to look for her now 12-year-old son. Louis, meanwhile, is harassed by his brother and former bandmate at a party, causing him to re-examine his life. He ultimately discovers Lyla's full name and whereabouts in Chicago, and quits his job to go there, hoping to reconcile.

After a raid on Wizard's abandoned theater home by the police, triggered by Jeffries, Evan takes refuge in an inner-city church. He again impresses with his natural musical talent and is brought to the Juilliard School, where he is enrolled in classes as "August Rush." He excels at his studies, and a work he composes is chosen to be performed by the New York Philharmonic at a concert in Central Park. Unfortunately, Wizard barges into the dress rehearsal, and "August", under threat of being revealed as Evan, reluctantly follows him back to his life of performing music on the streets.

Meanwhile, Lyla has discovered Evan's identity through Jeffries, and has decided to stay in New York while searching for her son. While there, she decides to resume her career as a cellist, and is invited to play in the same Central Park concert. Louis, being wrongly told by Lyla's former neighbor in Chicago that Lyla has since married, also returns to New York to resume playing with his former band. He has a chance meeting with Evan, who has returned to his corner at Washington Square Park, and they play an improvised piece together, although neither knows their blood relationship to the other. Louis encourages "August" not to give up in his music, and not to miss his concert.

The night of the concert, Evan finally chooses to run from Wizard, helped by Arthur, in favor of performing at his concert. After his own concert with his band at a local nightclub, Louis sees Evan's pseudonym along with Lyla's name on a sign billing the concert, and races on foot to Central Park. Meanwhile, Jeffries connects Evan to his alias after discovering a misplaced CPS flyer for August Rush, posted after his disappearance from Juilliard, and also heads to the concert. Evan conducts his rhapsody, attracting both Lyla and Louis to the front of the crowd, where they meet and reconcile, Lyla also realizing that "August" is her son Evan. At its conclusion, when Evan turns around to see Lyla and Louis standing hand in hand, he knows that he is reunited with his mother and father at last.

Cast

Music

The final number with Lyla and Louis begins with Lyla playing the Adagio-Moderato from Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor.

Except for "Dueling Guitars", all of August's guitar pieces were played by American guitarist-composer Kaki King, who also was a "body double" for Evan in certain closeups of the guitar playing.[citation needed]

Composer Mark Mancina spent over 18 months composing the film's musical score. "The heart of the story is how we respond and connect through music. It's about this young boy who believes that he's going to find his parents through his music. That's what drives him."[4] The final theme of the movie was composed first. The score was recorded at the Todd-AO Scoring Stage and the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers.[5]

Reception

Commercial

August Rush opened on November 21, 2007 and landed #7 that weekend with $9,421,369.[6] Based on an estimated $25 million budget, the film made $31,664,162 in domestic territories and $66,121,062 worldwide.[7]

Critical

In a review by USA Today, Claudia Puig commented that "August Rush will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry."[8] The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the film positively, writing "the story is about musicians and how music connects people, so the movie's score and songs, created by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, give poetic whimsy to an implausible tale."[9]

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 36% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 110 reviews. "Consensus: Though featuring a talented cast, August Rush cannot overcome the flimsy direction and schmaltzy plot."[10] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 38 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.[11]

Pam Grady of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "an inane musical melodrama." Grady said "the entire story is ridiculous" and "Coincidences pile on, behavior and motivations defy logic, and the characters are so thinly drawn that most of the cast is at a loss." She adds "the ending of the movie certainly did not impress me at all. They worked so hard on the rest of it but it came to a sudden end that left the movie unfinished."[12] Edward Douglas of comingsoon.net said it "doesn't take long for the movie to reveal itself as an extremely contrived and predictable movie that tries too hard to tug on the heartstrings."[13][unreliable source?]

Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, calling it "a movie drenched in sentimentality, but it's supposed to be."[14]

Jamila Gavin compared the film to Dickens' Oliver Twist and Coram Boy.[15][16]

Awards

The soundtrack has songs from new and established acts. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song (Raise It Up).

Young Artist Award

2008 Won Category/Recipient(s)

  • Best Family Feature Film (Comedy or Drama)
  • Best Performance in a Feature Film - Supporting Young Actor - Fantasy or Drama (Leon G. Thomas III)

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA

2008 Won Saturn Award Best Performance by a Younger Actor - Freddie Highmore

References

  1. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=augustrush.htm
  2. ^ http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/340444_august21q.html
  3. ^ "August Rush-music from the motion picture". starpulse.com. Retrieved 2009-09-11.
  4. ^ Crisafulli, Chuck and Graff, Gary. "And The Best Original Song Oscar Nominees Are..." Billboard. Retrieved 2008-11-09. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)[dead link]
  5. ^ Dan Goldwasser. "Scoring Session Photo Gallery from August Rush". ScoringSessions.com. Retrieved 2008-02-29.
  6. ^ "August Rush (2007) - Weekend Box Office Results - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-02-05.
  7. ^ "August Rush (2007) - Box Office Mojo". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-02-05.
  8. ^ Puig, Claudia (2007-11-23). "Lilting 'August Rush' is poetry in emotion". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-02-29. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ Honeycutt, Kirk (November 8, 2007). "August Rush". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2008-02-29. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  10. ^ "August Rush — Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2007-11-27.
  11. ^ "August Rush (2007): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2007-11-27.
  12. ^ Pam Grady (2007-11-21). "Review: Orphan has a song in his heart in 'August Rush'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-11-27.
  13. ^ [1]
  14. ^ Roger Ebert (2007-11-21). "August Rush". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2007-11-26.
  15. ^ Smith, Sid (2007-11-21). "August Rush (Oliver Twist reset in N.Y.) — 2 stars". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2007-12-15. Turn to the master, Charles Dickens, or better yet, update and recycle him. Such must have been the thinking behind August Rush, a thinly disguised retelling of Oliver Twist, transplanted to contemporary New York and sweetened by a theme of the healing magic of music.[dead link]
  16. ^ Covert, Colin (2007-11-20). "Movie review: Romanticism trumps reason in Rush". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2007-12-15. If Charles Dickens were alive today, he might be writing projects like August Rush, the unabashedly sentimental tale of a plucky orphan lad who falls in with streetwise urchins as he seeks the family he ought to have. Come to think of it, Dickens did write that one, and called it Oliver Twist.

External links

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