August Rush.

In the Independent, Geoffrey Macnab talks with Kirsten Sheridan: "The Dublin-based writer/director received an Oscar nomination for her contribution to the screenplay of her father Jim Sheridan's In America (2002). Now, barely into her thirties, she has directed her first Hollywood movie, the $30m (£15m) August Rush."

"This mawkish film pathologically adheres to the belief that musical ability is an innate thing, and so it is that when renowned cellist Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell) and Irish guitarist Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) bump uglies during a one-night stand staged within eyesight of Washington Square Park's magical marble arch, they unknowingly collaborate on an embryo that will one day become an avant-garde musical prodigy with an uncanny ability to mix styles old and new (which basically comes down to playing a guitar as if it were a drum," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "In spite of its flabbergasting self-absorption, August Rush's devotion to following through on its screwy internal logic is almost genius."

Update, 11/22.

"Acclimate yourself to the frenzied vibe," advises Ella Taylor in the Voice, "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."

"While many films require a suspension of disbelief, August Rush asks viewers to terminate their disbelief without severance and have security escort it from the building," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC.

"The problem with August Rush - much more than its unapologetically sentimental, melodramatic plot - is that the music in it isn't very good," finds Paul Matwychuk.

Updates, 11/21: "The movie... is acted in a style best described as overawed," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Oblivious to persecution and exploitation, [Freddie] Highmore's August glides through the movie with a beatific smile on his face. Mr Rhys Meyers and Ms Russell, who have no romantic chemistry, wander about in an emotional limbo."

Robin Williams plays "a Faginesque former musician who lives off the musical talents of his young, errant wards," notes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "How absurd is Williams in this role? He makes Patch Adams look like a good career move."

Jennifer Merin talks with Sheridan for the New York Press.

Updates, 11/22: "The film is what might be called a musical urban fairytale, which is to say its characters are one-dimensional archetypes (The Singer, The Musician) pumped full of saccharine and hot air," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club.

Robert W. Welkos talks with Sheridan for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at November 20, 2007 2:16 PM