In a movie based on a true story, Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) works for the L. A. Times. Like any true journalist he’s always trying to find the (newspaper)story in everyday life. One afternoon he happens upon Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) playing cello in a park under a statue of Beethoven. But while at first glance Ayers just your average street bum, Lopez immediately senses there’s something more. Soon Ayers becomes the subject of a weekly column about the Julliard dropout who sleeps under bridges. Both Downey Jr. and Foxx are extraordinary actors and Foxx last tackled musician Ray Charles with the same passionate depth that earned him an Oscar. The classical music allows director Joe Wright to elevate his audience to an emotional high much as he did in “Atonement” or “Pride and Prejudice” (though this is a huge jump from period piece to modern downtown L.A.) The first half of the movie moves along nicely in examining the questions ‘do I leave this baby genius on the streets?’ or ‘do I force him to go home?’ But somehow into act two, journalist Lopez fails to realize this is a life Ayers has chosen. Somehow this problem turns an otherwise enjoyable movie into an exhausting chore that forces the audience to want to scream out ‘you can’t help those who don’t help themselves!’ Though it all ends very non-Holllywood-studio-typical-happy-ending it leaves us examining what life might be like if we actually spoke to that guy we run into on the nearest park bench. Three tiaras (barely)
