...warmly affecting at times and almost unbearably saccharine at others.
Nevertheless, the characters and the acting cannot compete with a story that gets gushier and more sentimental as it goes along. It's a slick production, filmed largely on location in NYC; it's well acted, as I say; it's sincere beyond a fault; and it moves along at the speed of sound, if you count the sound of grass growing. The kid is appealing. The young couple are pleasing. The music is pleasant. The conflicts are trite. The plot is predictable. The sentiment is mawkish.
"August Rush" offers up emotion, desire, fighting, death, redemption, and coincidences galore. Worse, it doesn't take long before it turns into a pure fantasy, resorting to exaggeration and ridiculous, inexplicable actions. The ending is inevitable, but it defies belief. Taken as a parable, an allegory, a fairy-tale romance, "August Rush" has a certain engaging quality. But unless you like your stories really maudlin--unabashedly weepy--you may not find yourself quite as swept away by it as it would like to take you.
Video:
As they have been doing recently, Warner Bros. offer the film in both a full-screen and a widescreen version on flip sides of the same disc. The 1.33:1 full-screen is a pan-and-scan rendering of the movie that clips off about 44% of the sides of each frame. The widescreen preserves the film's original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1. A high bit rate and anamorphic processing also help in reproducing the image, which comes up fine for standard definition, a bit soft and a trifle subdued, perhaps, but reasonably clear and clean and looking fairly truthful.
Audio:
Likewise, the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio does a good job conveying the movie's music and dialogue. One notices immediately the wide frequency response and ample stereo spread. Then one notices the extreme bass, the shimmering highs, the naturalness of the midrange, and the extent of the surrounds, showing up particularly well in crowd noise and applause. The music, especially, comes off well.
Extras:
Warner Bros. don't provide much in the way of extras. The main thing is about ten minutes of additional scenes, a half dozen or so of them. Beyond that, we get thirty-one scene selections but no chapter insert; a few trailers at start-up only for other WB and New Line titles; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
"August Rush" is a lot better than I thought it was going to be and a lot worse than it could have been. Still, with the dearth of good family pictures around, "August Rush" fills a void and comes across with at least a modicum of charm. Now, if only we couldn't guess almost every turn in the story from the very outset....
"The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen."
"August Rush" offers up emotion, desire, fighting, death, redemption, and coincidences galore. Worse, it doesn't take long before it turns into a pure fantasy, resorting to exaggeration and ridiculous, inexplicable actions. The ending is inevitable, but it defies belief. Taken as a parable, an allegory, a fairy-tale romance, "August Rush" has a certain engaging quality. But unless you like your stories really maudlin--unabashedly weepy--you may not find yourself quite as swept away by it as it would like to take you.
Video:
As they have been doing recently, Warner Bros. offer the film in both a full-screen and a widescreen version on flip sides of the same disc. The 1.33:1 full-screen is a pan-and-scan rendering of the movie that clips off about 44% of the sides of each frame. The widescreen preserves the film's original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1. A high bit rate and anamorphic processing also help in reproducing the image, which comes up fine for standard definition, a bit soft and a trifle subdued, perhaps, but reasonably clear and clean and looking fairly truthful.
Audio:
Likewise, the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio does a good job conveying the movie's music and dialogue. One notices immediately the wide frequency response and ample stereo spread. Then one notices the extreme bass, the shimmering highs, the naturalness of the midrange, and the extent of the surrounds, showing up particularly well in crowd noise and applause. The music, especially, comes off well.
Extras:
Warner Bros. don't provide much in the way of extras. The main thing is about ten minutes of additional scenes, a half dozen or so of them. Beyond that, we get thirty-one scene selections but no chapter insert; a few trailers at start-up only for other WB and New Line titles; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
Parting Shots:
"August Rush" is a lot better than I thought it was going to be and a lot worse than it could have been. Still, with the dearth of good family pictures around, "August Rush" fills a void and comes across with at least a modicum of charm. Now, if only we couldn't guess almost every turn in the story from the very outset....
"The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen."
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