August Rush doesn't fit into any Hollywood formula I know. The story is unusual, the direction is quirky, the pacing is completely out-of-sync with typical Hollywood rhythms. Yet for all its indie shortcomings, it is actually a sweet and poetic film.

If your movie tastes haven't been stiffened and dulled by formulaic Hollywood movies, you may find numerous grace notes in this curiously enjoyable film.

The gorgeous Keri Russell and the even more gorgeous Jonathan Rhys Meyers play musicians who meet, fall in lust, and spend a magical night together. They part ways. She becomes pregnant. And by an extraordinary turn of events, she and her newborn son are separated.

The boy (a charming Freddie Highmore) grows up in an orphanage and goes to New York City where he befriends a ragtag group of young buskers led by Robin Williams. Although he's never handled a guitar, the boy can instinctively play one. Before you can say "musical prodigy", he is accepted in the famous Juilliard performing arts school...

Directed with both care and abandon by Kirsten Sheridan, August Rush is one of the most amateurishly sweet movies I have ever seen. Part of its charm lies in the fact that the filmmakers don't seem to care how this movie would perform at the box-office. Rather they're more concerned with telling a story as honest and sincerely as they can.

The result is a film that is one part amateurism, one part formula, and one part pure, unadulterated charm.