On The Couch 2011 #23: Young@Heart

Young@Heart hooked me right at the open. An elderly woman with a British accent is belting out The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go almost as if it were spoken word poetry before being joined in at the chorus by the rest of her choir.

You haven’t heard “Should I Stay or Should I Go” until you’ve heard this lady sing it.

While watching Young@Heart, I couldn’t help but wish that I have the high levels of energy and enthusiasm that these senior citizens have on display throughout the entire film. Even when their choir director Bob picks a song for them that they don’t initially like, they jump into it, learn it and end up singing it in a way that I think any of the writers of the songs featured in the movie ever envisioned them being sung.

But man, Young@Heart is vicious movie. Unlike The Expendables, not everyone is makes it out of this documentary in the end. It was like watching Lost: as soon as I was really into one of the people in the movie, they died. The fact that these are real people and not characters made it even harder to accept. But Young@Heart turns the deaths in the movies into positive messages. At its core, the movie is about living life to its fullest, and picking up and carrying on when a loved one passes away.

I immediately gave this movie five stars after watching it. I kind of want some of the songs on my iPod as well.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *