MOVIES: Young at Heart (Stephen Walker, 2007)

The Young at Heart Chorus, of Northampton, Massachusetts, is made up of about two dozen singers, each of them at least 70 years old; their repertoire consists on contemporary pop and rock songs by Sonic Youth, Coldplay, and David Bowie (to name a few). Walker's documentary follows the chorus through the seven weeks of rehearsals that lead up to a sold-out concert. It's a reasonably entertaining movie, but Walker gets none of the credit; the movie's strengths exist despite him, not because of him.

What do I mean by that? Well, the movie's most effective moments, those that pack the biggest punch, would exist no matter who were making the movie; when the chorus is informed that one of its members has just died, for instance, a 4-year-old with a video camera couldn't fail to capture the emotion of that moment. The moments where Walker's directorial touch is in evidence, on the other hand, are without fail the clumsiest and meanest moments.

Take, for instance, the chorus's struggle to learn the song "Yes We Can Can." It's a tricky chorus, with odd rhythms and phrases that never repeat in quite the way you expect them to. I've known professional choristers who would take some time to memorize that chorus. But when the Young at Heart singers struggle with it, Walker frames their difficulty as a collective senior moment. His condescension to his subjects also shows up in an adolescent snickering tone whenever any of the singers dares to suggest that their interest in romance and sex didn't end when they hit 35.

Worst of all is one of the most viciously cruel editing choices I've ever seen in a movie. As we watch one of the singers being placed in an ambulance for transport from the hospital to a convalescent home, Walker's soundtrack is the chorus's rendition of a Talking Heads song: "We're on the road to nowhere..."

Despite Walker's nastiness, the decency and likability of the Young at Heart members shines through. Eileen Hall, the oldest member at 92, is a lovable flirt; Fred Knittle impresses with his quiet strength and dignity (and his rendition of Coldplay's "Fix You" is, for many reasons, the musical highlight of the movie). The members of the chorus survive Walker's mean-spiritedness, and the movie is worth seeing for them.