If you’re looking for a feel-good movie, then this modern day fairy tale will fit the bill for a movie night with the girls. Cynics and diabetics may want to avoid “August Rush” though, the former will loathe the excessive sentimentality and the latter may become comatose from the sweetness.

I understand a few critics have called it a family film but let’s be clear here, two of the main characters are strangers who do the horizontal mambo on a rooftop, which produces the third main character, Evan Taylor aka August Rush (Freddie Highmore). Though the whole scene is very prettified and romantic, with a discreet fade to tinkling wind chimes, it is a one night stand. And one night stands that result in pregnancy are seldom pretty and glossy romances that end well.

But this is a modern day fairy tale so for Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), a New York Philharmonic cellist and Louis Connolly (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a singer songwriter, it is pretty much love at first sight, not lust. They agree to meet the next day but Lyla is late. Louis goes looking for her, just in time to see her father force her into a car. All Louis has of her (besides memories) is a photograph his brother took of them curled together in sleep. She, as we know, ends up with considerably more than memories. After a fight with her manager-father about her pregnancy, Lyla impulsively runs into the street. We hear a crash and the next scene is Lyla on her way to an emergency operation. When she wakes up, her baby is dead. Or so her father tells her. She has a promising career after all, why ruin it?

We meet the fruit of that night at 11 years old, living in a rather grim boys’ home. I didn’t know orphanages still existed but “August Rush” does have a few Oliver Twist notions about it. The other boys brand Evan a freak because of his unique gift for hearing music in anything and everything – grass, subway cars, skateboards, in short: anything that makes a sound. Eventually he runs away to New York to find his parents and falls in with a child-gang of musician runaways, “managed” by a red-haired huckster named Wizard. Wizard looks like Robin Williams doing a “bad” Bono. Now Bono, I mean Wizard, knows a good deal when he hears Evan playing guitar one night. He gives the boy his “stage name” of August Rush and tries to market his amazing talent beyond the street corners where the other urchins play.

Lyla and Louis are no longer musicians. She‘s a music teacher in Chicago and he’s some kind of business executive. But both can’t forget that one magical night and each other. When Lyla’s dying father confesses he faked her signature on adoption papers, she goes to New York City to find her child, a real challenge since she doesn’t know his name or anything about him beyond a birth date. Meantime, Louis has tracked her down to Chicago and just misses her. And both of them feel an irresistible urge to start playing music again.

“August Rush” has an amazing number of coincidences and contrivances. Lyla “just happens” to find her son’s social worker, Louis “just happens” to find Evan playing guitar in the park, Evan “just happens” to find a kindly reverend who gets him into Juilliard Music School, etc. New York seems more like a small town than the huge city it is. And it’s so clean. Even the street kids and the condemned building where they live are well-scrubbed.

“August Rush” is a pretty movie with pretty people, pretty music and pretty cinematography. If you want something dark and serious, go watch “Atonement”. If you want light melodrama and happy endings, then “August Rush” is perfect. “August Rush” is available on DVD.