Pun Salad

A welcome respite from my recent streak of unfunny comedies, this movie is (instead) a very sentimental story about love and music. During the movie, I thought to myself: if Dickens were alive, and a screenwriter, this is the kind of movie he'd write. Now I've looked at some of the reviews, and it appears that a lot of critics mentioned this too.

It's the story of a young lad who has grown up in an orphanage. Via flashbacks we learn that he's the offspring of two musical talents who had an impossibly romantic hookup one evening. By a series of plot contrivances, father, mother, and child are all separated from each other for years. Will they be reunited? Son, is water wet?

This got mediocre reviews (36% on the Tomatometer), but if you're not a critic, and you're not allergic to supergooey sentiment, you might like it. There are (I thought) some pretty clever things done with the sound editing. The principal characters, played by Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Freddie Highmore are all pretty good. Robin Williams has a supporting role as Fagin, I mean "Wizard", a collector/curator/exploiter of homeless street kids.