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August Rush, critics generally agree, is the kind of sentimental family film that may have particular appeal to the majority of moviegoers -- that is, teens and young adults. The problem is that most critics don't fit into that category themselves. "To 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," comments Stephen Holden in the New York Times. Jan Stuart in Newsday comments: "If there is anything more deflating than a captivating child actor as he transitions into gawky adolescence, it is watching it happen in a lousy movie." Elizabeth Weitzman remarks in the New York Daily News: "You could make gallons of maple syrup from all the sap that drips off August Rush." And it doesn't pass the taste test of Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times, either. "August Rush feels like the cinematic equivalent of being stuffed with fruitcake and doused with a gallon of egg nog," she writes. But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times appears to have enjoyed it all, writing, "Here is a movie drenched in sentimentality, but it's supposed to be. I dislike sentimentality where it doesn't belong, but there's something brave about the way August Rush declares itself and goes all the way with coincidence, melodrama and skillful tear-jerking." |
