Young@Heart is a 2008

2008 in film

This is a list of all major films made in 2008.-Highest-grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2008...

 British

Cinema of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 directed by Stephen Walker

Stephen Walker (filmmaker)

Stephen Walker is a British filmmaker and director primarily known in the UK for his TV documentaries. He has directed around 14 films, and was voted in the top 10 directors in the UK in Broadcast Magazine in 2007....

. Its focus is Young@Heart, a New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 chorus of senior citizen

Senior citizen

Senior citizen is a common polite designation for an elderly person in both UK and US English, and it implies or means that the person is retired. This in turn implies or in fact means that the person is over the retirement age, which varies according to country. Synonyms include pensioner in UK...

s that sings contemporary and classic rock and pop songs.

Synopsis

Young@Heart, a chorus of twenty-two senior citizens with an average age of eighty, is directed by a frequently demanding Bob Cilman. In preparation for a concert in their hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts

Northampton, Massachusetts

The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Northampton's central neighborhoods, was 28,549...

, they spend two months learning new material ranging from James Brown

James Brown

James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...

 to the Pointer Sisters

Pointer Sisters

The Pointer Sisters are an American pop/R&B recording act from Oakland, California that achieved mainstream success during the 1970s and 1980s. Spanning over three decades, their repertoire has included such diverse genres as pop, disco, jazz, bebop, blues, soul, funk, dance, country and rock.The...

 to The Clash

The Clash

The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...

 and Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

, a task that's daunting for them and frequently frustrating for Cilman. At one point they take a break to visit a nearby low-security prison and entertain the inmates, who literally and figuratively embrace them after they perform. The group's determination to succeed increases with the passing of two of their members in rapid succession, and the concert proves to be a major success with the community.

Production

The film was produced for British television and edited for its theatrical release.

It premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival

Los Angeles Film Festival

The Los Angeles Film Festival, presented by the Los Angeles Times is an event held annually in June in downtown Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles Film Festival began as the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in 1995. The first LAIFF took place over the course of five days in a single...

, where it won the Audience Award for Best International Feature, and was shown at South by Southwest

South by Southwest

South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...

, the Florida Film Festival

Florida Film Festival

The Florida Film Festival, produced by Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida, is an annual international film festival. Showcasing the best American independent and foreign films, the festival has become one of the most respected regional film events in the United States.-Overview:The Festival...

, and the Philadelphia International Film Festival before going into limited release in the United States.

Critical reception

Young@Heart received largely favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 reports 88% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 78 reviews, and Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

 reports the film had an average score of 75 out of 100, based on 23 reviews.

Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden is an American writer, music critic, film critic, and poet.Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963...

 of the New York Times observed, "At moments the movie . . . risks being a cloying, rose-colored study of happy old folks at play, and the cheer sounds forced. But the lives of the several members it examines at some depth are too real and complicated to resemble a commercial starring Wilford Brimley

Wilford Brimley

Allen Wilford Brimley is an American actor. He has appeared in such films as The China Syndrome, Cocoon, The Thing and The Firm. He had a recurring role on the 1970s television series The Waltons...

 as a Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell

Norman Percevel Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening...

 grandpa. The movie offers an encouraging vision of old age in which the depression commonly associated with decrepitude is held at bay by music making, camaraderie and a sense of humor."

Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle

Austin Chronicle

The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly, tabloid-style newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic...

rated the film 3½ out of four stars. He felt that "despite an occasional lapse into nudge-nudge jokes about geriatric sex, incontinence, and the driving skills of the elderly," it "eschews the clichés about old people for something that we can all relate to: our own mortality."

The film was named the best of the year by Marc Mohan of The Oregonian

The Oregonian

The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...

, and it appeared on several top ten lists, including those of the New York Daily News and The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter

Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

.

Box office performance

The film opened in four theaters in the United States on April 9, 2008 and grossed $50,937 in its opening weekend. It eventually grossed a total of $3,992,189 in the US.

Awards and nominations

The film won the Rose d'Or

Rose d'Or

The Rose d’Or is one of the most important international festivals in entertainment television. It was founded in Montreux in 1961 and has taken place in Lucerne since 2004. Producers, executives from independent and public service broadcasters and heads of production companies from over 40...

 for Best Art Documentary and the Audience Awards at the Atlanta Film Festival

Atlanta Film Festival

The Atlanta Film Festival is an Academy Award qualifying, international film festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. Started in 1976 and occurring every April, the festival shows a diverse range of independent films, including genre films such as horror and sci-fi...

 and the Warsaw International Film Festival.

DVD release

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of the 20th Century Fox film studio. It was established in 1976 as Magnetic Video Corporation, and later as 20th Century Fox Video, CBS/Fox Video and FoxVideo, Inc....

 released the film on DVD on September 16, 2008. It is in anamorphic widescreen

Anamorphic widescreen

Anamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...

 format, with audio tracks in English and Spanish and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French. Bonus features include Young@Heart Goes to Hollywood, eight deleted scenes, and two music video

Music video

A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...

s, one a medley of the Bee Gees

Bee Gees

The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...

' "Stayin' Alive

Stayin' Alive

"Stayin' Alive" is a song by the pop group Bee Gees from the Saturday Night Fever motion picture soundtrack. The song was written by the Bee Gees and produced by the Bee Gees, Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson. It was released on 13 December 1977, as the second single from the Saturday Night Fever...

" and Gloria Gaynor

Gloria Gaynor

Gloria Gaynor is an American singer, best known for the disco era hits; "I Will Survive" , "Never Can Say Goodbye" , "Let Me Know " and "I Am What I Am" .-Early career:Gaynor was a singer with the Soul...

's "I Will Survive

I Will Survive

"I Will Survive" is a song first performed by American singer Gloria Gaynor, released in October 1978. It was written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris...

", the other "Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere

"Road to Nowhere" is a song by Talking Heads, from the 1985 album Little Creatures. It also appeared on Best of Talking Heads, Sand in the Vaseline: Popular Favorites, the Once in a Lifetime box set and the Brick box set...

" by Talking Heads

Talking Heads

Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...

.