AUGUST RUSH [PG]

There are plenty of moments in August Rush when the inexperience of its creative team (director Kirsten Sheridan and screenwriters Nick Castle and James V. Hart) leave large tracts of cinematic land unexploited. In fact, it’s almost like watching a film school thesis, lacking in commercial appeal yet heady in pensive thought, languid explorations into human emotion and charmingly unaware of its shortcomings of character and plot. Were that the case, however, this would be the best film school thesis I’d ever had the joy to screen. Picturesque and heartfelt, the film masquerades as a romantic family film in its trailers; in fact, it’s more kin to poetry or a symphonic composition than it is to a “traditional” movie. That makes it especially joyful for those who can suspend their subscription to the definition of film Hollywood has groomed us to accept.

The film’s plot will remind literature aficionados of Oliver Twist. Twenty-something musicians Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Lyla (Keri Russell) have a romantic one-night-stand (it’s odd, but this film makes it work) overlooking Central Park in New York. The result is Evan (Freddie Highmore, last seen as a young Russell Crowe in A Good Year), a musical prodigy who is separated from his mother at birth; ten years later he escapes from an orphanage, runs to NYC and ends up living in an abandoned theatre under the tutelage of the Fagin-esque “Wizard” (Robin Williams). Evan’s musical talents blossom, he is renamed August Rush, and he is exploited – but he never gives up hope that his music will bring his broken family back together.

The film utterly fails to captivate on its characterizations or plot. Much of the dialogue is stilted, if not overtly corny, and the plot is extraordinarily lightweight. None of that explains why the project was greenlighted – and so the film confuses for its first half-hour, despite superb performances from its four principles. The film requires a submission to its own unique poetic meter – and to the compelling music of Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, whose rhythmic musical score includes a heady blend of symphonic, jazz, gospel and urban sounds.

Highmore, despite his lack of realism in the musical segments of the film, hits the right notes as an orphan whose blend of hope and determination have the power to alter fates. Russell (Waitress) turns in her best performance yet. And Rhys Meyers (Mission: Impossible III) may have acted well; he’s so darned attractive it’s hard to concentrate. Curiously, Terrence Howard offers just a bit of his trademark zeal in the role of a social worker, and Williams (License To Wed) delivers erratically in the seemingly bipolar Wizard.

The individual performances, however, lie completely at the mercy of the visionary gamble of August Rush. Audience members who are either unable to voluntarily succumb to the dreamy, emotive meanderings of this poetic work, or who are influenced by the cackling of those less-introspective viewers around them might find the film boring and incomprehensible. For those who are wont to find music and poetry in the world around them, August Rush will deliver a heartwarming holiday treat that will lift your spirits.••• –David Foucher

David Foucher is the publisher of EDGE, a Boston-based network of websites in eleven major markets nationwide.