“Punk’s not dead, it just smells bad.” Never have these words rung truer than in the case of Young@Heart, a documentary about the eponymous chorus, which is made up of really old people. The members’ average age is 80, yet they sing hits by The Clash, the Ramones and Sonic Youth. “If it’s too loud, you’re too old”? Nah, these grandpas and grandmas (one is even a great-great-grandma) are down with the scene like you wouldn’t believe.
Yeah, right. The chorus coordinator is a crazy funky-haired manchild whose greatest skill is picking the most moronic songs for the elderly to perform. Irony runs rampant throughout the film, but without blinking they rehearse I Wanna Be Sedated, Fix You, and motherfucking I Feel Good. They even cover Schizophrenia by Sonic Youth, which is a bad song to sing unironically, but coming from the mouths of people who may very well be suffering from that illness, it’s unbearable.
Halfway through the film, some of the chorus members die. We are told that one of the older members had to retire from touring at some point, after having a heart attack on stage. Yet more irony, given the chorus’ name, but throughout his monologues on why he enjoys singing and what his tombstone will read, he remains oblivious.
The climax is a would-you-believe-it sold-out concert at some theatre. The unremarkable but crowd-pleasing I Feel Good gets the most applause, while the audience sits patiently through Schizophrenia, whose performance I find amusingly similar to a school play. The people paying for this… thing are satisfied, although I have a sneaking suspicion that if it were midgets on stage singing, instead of old people, they would still say it’s “very very very good.”
Yes, the Young@Heart chorus is just a novelty act, one that claims that anyone can sing any song. Bullshit. Having a wrinkled 92-year old woman (who fancies herself some sort of hot sexy babe throughout the film, ironically of course) recite the first lines of Should I Stay Or Should I Go is kinda funny when you think about it, but you’d only think of putting that into practice if you were really drunk and out of touch with reality. The singers have lost their grip on reality themselves – they think that singing punk songs (IRONICALLY) is good for their health, but it’s just a healthy dose of escapism.
- moceanu
5.5/10
moceanu
prowler
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