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75I'd rather August Rush went the whole way than just be lukewarm about it. Yes, some older viewers will groan, but I think up to a certain age, kids will buy it, and in imagining their response, I enjoyed my own.
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75Will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry.
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70The 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.
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67In the end, this could be the year's most sharply defined love-it-or-hate-it movie.
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60Unapologetically preposterous, but it is a (very sweet) fairy tale and Highmore is captivating.
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Acclimate yourself to the frenzied vibe, and you'll feel the movie grow into itself as an urban fairy tale whose rapturous finale stakes a wishful claim on the redemptive power of love and art.
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60Only auds immune to diabetic rushes should head for August Rush, though tolerant parents wanting wholesome entertainment for the kids will like it for its repetitive encouragement of creativity.
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It's an unabashed feel-good weeper, and those eager for that type of fare might as well settle for this one. But an equal number will be put off by the bad dialogue, transparent manipulation and saccharine overkill.
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50The plot is preposterous. Particularly the part about a kid who has never before played an instrument, but can pick up a guitar and play like Eric Clapton and belly up to a church organ and perform like Mozart.
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50For those who loved his singing in "Velvet Goldmine," Rhys-Meyers once again proves that he has pipes.
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50The dialogue is dippy. And there's no real suspense: The filmmakers are so deadly earnest about the power of music and love and all that stuff, you just twiddle your thumbs waiting for the inevitable.
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50Feels like the cinematic equivalent of being stuffed with fruitcake and doused with a gallon of egg nog, so if that's the sort of thing you go in for around the holidays . . .
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40August Rush is a rather prosaic, oddly anxious, contemporary take on Dickens' Oliver Twist, with Williams – in nasty-man twee mode, a newish one for him – thrown in for bad measure.
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40To describe August Rush as a piece of shameless hokum doesn't quite do justice to the potentially shock-inducing sugar content of this contemporary fairy tale.
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38It would be nice to say this predictable fantasy has such a big heart, we can forgive its excesses. But director Kirsten Sheridan overplays nearly every already-corny scene, and there is no chemistry between Russell and Rhys Meyers, who appear to be passing through on their way to better projects.
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38This is the sort of movie that requires you not only to suspend disbelief, but to check your sanity at the ticket counter.
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38Odd, quasi-mystical movie that's too silly for adults to take seriously and frankly too weird for kids.
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38The Hollywood version of one of those fawning "60 Minutes" segments about musical prodigies. For most of it, I could hear the congested awe of Morley Safer.
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38You'll have to swallow this gooey confection whole or spit it out after the first couple of bites.
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33Robin Williams (yes, I'm afraid so) plays a kind of Manhattan-based Fagin with a touch of Midnight Cowboy to his wardrobe. And ants will play havoc in any cynic's pants as this loopy, goopy fairy tale about a kid looking for his parents oozes to its predictable finish.
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33Simultaneously swooningly romantic and transcendently idiotic.
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33Poetic conceits only work if they're poetic.
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30Intended as a fuzzy family fable, "August" plays more to the gag reflex than to the heart, especially when our little orphan starts playing the guitar like a virtuoso after what seems like a three-minute tutorial.
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30Williams's overacting, Russell's pinched melancholy, and Highmore's unflagging chirpiness would be trying enough on their own, but the convoluted story, with its pileup of obstacles and coincidences, makes this sophomore effort by director Kirsten Sheridan (Disco Pigs) an exercise in dissonance.
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An inane musical melodrama.
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25August Rush isn't just a bad movie - it's an aggressively bad movie.
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25A sickly sweet family drama.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 77 out of 104
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Mixed: 10 out of 104
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Negative: 17 out of 104
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