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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 11/27/2007 : 23:07:07
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August Rush
Oh, pul-eeze! pass the sick bag before I puke from this saccharine tale that doesn't know whether it's magical realism, modern fairy-tale, or Hallmark greeting card with embedded violins.
Yeah, I know, there are gonna be scads of folk will love this story of little orphaned genius boy who's never met his parents, and unbeknown to him they've never seen each other since his conception night, but in his little genius heart he just knows he's gonna find them and they're gonna get together and everyone's gonna live oh-so-happily ever after ... all together now ... ahhhh!
The film's suffused with music from start to finish, which is no surprise given the parents are both musos - he - Jonathan Rhys Myers as an Irish singer/songwriter in a band with his brothers - she - Keri Russell as a Juilliard trained classical cellist who rejects her father's ambition for her potential glittering career when he tells her the baby she and Myers conceived died after birth.
That dead baby, however, lives in the body of Freddie Highmore, raised in a rural orphanage, and escapes to the Big Apple, following the music. Whatever that means.
It's his adventures down the mean streets, punctuated by a sprinkle of kindness from various strangers - and a couple of knockout performances from some children - that forms the bottom layer of this frothy layer cake. Somewhere on the creamy top, he blossoms into a Mozart-like prodigy, and the cherry on this confection is the realization of his fervent dreams.
What ruins the story is a skittish approach to script construction. The whole sub-plot with the parents is unnecessary, diverting, and keeps changing the tone of the film. The kid's story sustains and would have held the whole thing together, especially with Highmore in the role. He's got immense screen charm and provides depth to an almost Candide-like exterior.
I kept wanting there to be more a sense of magic as some antidote to the grim realities the kid encounters. Unfortunately as there was none between the supposed romantic leads, there wasn't much more anywhere else. So the fairytale ending just plays as silly.
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 11/28/2007 : 08:38:15
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I'm afraid I liked it.
It certainly is quite a ridiculous premise - at least for 1995. (Indeed, many aspects of the film are Victorian, such as the abandoned theatre accommodating a tribe of runaways led by a Fagin-like character.) A baby would never be taken for adoption on the basis of just an unwitnessed signature. Social workers would try quite hard to see whether there were a way the mother could keep the baby - they wouldn't just accept it the day it was born. I'd also be surprised if the state or orphanage could adopt a child - that definitely wouldn't be the case here. And couples are crying out for babies to adopt, so a non-disabled one would never be left to grow up in care. Also, those children in care would very likely be fostered rather than in children's homes, especially ones of Freddie Highmore's character's age or younger.
However, Highmore gives a good performance as usual (and has looked the same age for about the last three years, somehow), and so I found it very satisfying. I felt it managed to pull off the "I can hear the music" stuff.
N.B. This is the film I wanted to add continuity errors for - over the character's age. For example, the missing poster gives his date of birth as 17th December 2005 alongside his age being twelve, plus he says he has been waiting for his parents for eleven years and sixteen days (if he means the time at the boys' home, (i) why? and (ii) where was he before that?). |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 11/28/2007 : 14:39:44
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| The trailer for this made me want to vomit. |
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Demisemicenturian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 11/28/2007 : 15:27:43
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But I thought you liked vomit? Surely it counts as gore?!  |
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August Rush
