| Original Score: B- | Feb 14, 2012

A music box trying to pass itself off as an orchestra.

Full Review | May 5, 2010

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.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 1, 2008

However predictable, a good ol' fashioned happy ending is always welcome. But bring a box of tissues: A good cry is to be expected as well.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 1, 2007

Even the final few moments, which should have us choking up, seemed hurried and shot from the wrong angles.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2007

Watching this yucky emotional drama is like being sprayed with treacle from a high-pressure hose.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 23, 2007

A show-stopping compendium of clichés, bogus emotions, duff dialogue and cringeworthy performances. Yet it's so naively idiotic that it's hard to hate. Better just to ignore it.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 23, 2007

Yes, August Rush is cheesy, almost embarrassingly so, but it's also irrepressibly sweet.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 23, 2007

This inspirational drama gets three stars for oddity value alone.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Nov 22, 2007

August Rush will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 22, 2007

August's journey is good for the soul, the rapturous beauty of it all so all-encompassing just thinking about it again can't help but fill me with unabashed joy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 21, 2007

Exuberantly bad and strenuously preposterous.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 21, 2007

Intended as a fuzzy family fable, August plays more to the gag reflex than to the heart.

| Nov 21, 2007

If it isn't brilliant cinema, it's honest and powerful.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 21, 2007

[An] inane musical melodrama.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 21, 2007

Schmaltzy and borderline insufferable.

| Original Score: D+ | Nov 21, 2007

It would be nice to say this predictable fantasy has such a big heart, we can forgive its excesses. But director Kirsten Sheridan overplays nearly every already-corny scene.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 21, 2007

August Rush feels like the cinematic equivalent of being stuffed with fruitcake and doused with a gallon of egg nog.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 21, 2007

The goal is to drive mothers everywhere insane with the urge to rescue him and brush his hair (or the other way around), and in my case it worked.

| Nov 21, 2007

It's hard to believe in the magical power of music to heal and connect lost souls when the tunes are lame.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 21, 2007