(2.5 out of 5 stars)

Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), plays an orphan named August Rush who believes he will find his parents one day through his connection to music. Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers play the mother and father who after their one night fling that creates August separate for a time until the magical reuniting can occur. This movie is part family drama, part romance, and part fantasy but just wasn’t compelling enough to be interesting throughout.

The acting was fine, but it was nothing to brag about. Where August scores well is in the score. There is a lot of music in this movie as the mother is in the orchestra, the father is in a rock band, and the kid is a phenom…one of those genius kids that was just made for music. The music is good too with sweeping medleys and radio friendly rock songs, if the movie would have done better, a single would have been in the works for Rhys-Meyers.

When we get to dialogue, the movie falls apart. It is interesting to see the kid hear music through everything : the traffic in the streets, the birds in the trees, the water draining in the sink…but when the actors talk about their dreams, desires and problems, I found that I just didn’t care what they were saying and was utterly bored with what they were hoping to do : reconnect. Heck, I was just wanting to connect.

It took a while to view this movie as it is a 2007 film, but Hollywood Video doesn’t carry this, so I smartly became a member of Netflix and now won’t have a problem viewing movies the store doesn’t offer.

The difference between this movie and others with fantasy and music is the actual story. While August has good music, it is not even in the same league as the music in Once. And where the idea of music connecting people has all the ingredients of a god fantasy, Finding Neverland contains characters that make that fantasy a reality. In this movie, it really didn’t matter whether the kid found his parents or not; conducting the symphony was enough, but it wasn’t enough to save the movie from being forgettable.