August Rush

Hopefully we're all familiar with the ever so popular boy meets girl, boy sleeps with girl, girl has a baby plot line. It's been used in many stories and in many movies, including August Rush, only instead of focusing on the parents, we're shown the life of an orphan looking for the people gave him up.

Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore), a 11 year old boy is an orphan given up at birth, and he has a special gift. He can hear music. Everywhere, Evan can hear the music that our world creates but we often miss. He believes that music will be his way of finding his parents.

When Evan runs away from the orphanage that he's called home for 11 years and 16 days and ends up in New York, he follows the music to Arthur (Leon G. Thomas III), who in return introduces him to Wizard, a "crazy" musician who owns a condemned theater housing homeless or orphaned children. When Wizard (Robin Williams) finds out about August's talent with music, he takes him under his wing. But when things turn sour between him and his new friends, August runs to a church where he meets Hope (Jamia Simone Nash), the daughter of the preacher who shows her father her musical prodigy living under her bed. Her father enrolls Evan into a musical college where he composes a rhapsody.

The movie is fantastic. It's a loving story about a boy desperately looking for his parents using his gift of music. It'll touch your heart, and help you listen to the music around you.