All Critics (127)
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Top Critics (29)
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Fresh (45)
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Rotten (83)
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DVD (16)
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.
Even the final few moments, which should have us choking up, seemed hurried and shot from the wrong angles.
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.
Exuberantly bad and strenuously preposterous.
Intended as a fuzzy family fable, August plays more to the gag reflex than to the heart.
[An] inane musical melodrama.
Essentially an extended music video, and with about as much narrative weight, August Rush is empty, flat, and pointless.
A music box trying to pass itself off as an orchestra.
A heartwarming fairy-tale that is undeniably sweet, even if it occasionally crosses over into sappiness.
"The only thing astounding about this movie is how bad it is."
Someone in Hollywood must have it in for Thanksgiving. How else to explain the cruelly timed release of August Rush, a wretched confection that only the most determined will be able to count among their blessings?
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.
...a lot better than I thought it was going to be and a lot worse than it could have been. (HD DVD and DVD Combo Edition)
Its almost desperate earnestness actually turns out to be its greatest appeal -- August Rush does believe in fairy tales, it does it does it does!
... the "Oliver Twist" knockoff forgoes the social commentary of Dickens to play up the gooey romantic fantasy of music as the language of love.
If you approach it with the right attitude, it's impossible not to be moved by this tale of music, loss, and passion.
August Rush kind of feels like a 2-hour coming attractions preview. Lots of fragmented stuff happens, without ever connecting the dots in between.
...warmly affecting at times and almost unbearably saccharine at others.
When a movie is as disappointing and simplistic as this family melodrama, showing deleted scenes in the DVD edition (March 2008) only exposes more the film's shortcomings.
It doesn't matter if you love music or inspirational stories or Robin Williams (anyone?) -- this is enough to make your teeth ache.
More fable than film, there is no earthly reason why August Rush should work. But it does.
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