`Young @ Heart' is a movie for just about everyone.

Byline: Jim Keogh

COLUMN: FILM CLIPS

In this space each week, it's my job to advise. See this movie, don't see that movie. The hope is that you'll trust my opinion enough to be guided in your film selections. (If your strategy is to avoid movies that I recommend and race to movies I hate, hey, that works, too.)

I also heed advice offered by others, and a good dose of it came my way last week at the gym, where my pathetic attempt to get my boomer body in shape was interrupted by Don, a fellow gym rat, who asked if I'd seen "Young @ Heart," the documentary about a senior citizen chorus in Northampton that delivers unique interpretations of rock 'n' roll hits.

I hadn't. While the reviews were stellar, I figured "Young @ Heart's" stint at Showcase North would be so brief that I'd resigned myself to catching up with it on DVD.

"You've got to go," Don insisted, then launched into an impassioned argument of why my attendance was essential. He ended with the fact that the film had reduced him to tears and was one for the ages. "You could bring your wife, your daughter, your mother, and you'd all love it," he said, before repeating, "You've got to go."

How could I resist? I may be cynical about a lot of things, but when somebody whose opinion I respect (and a fellow Cinema 320 devotee to boot) urges me to check out a movie with this level of enthusiasm, it gets to the top of my list fast. So I ditched my idea to spend Saturday night suffering through "Sex and the City" and writing a snarky piece about it, and instead made a date with the geriatric glee club.

Here's what I found. The theater was packed with people, most of them northward of 65. One man bent at the waist and using a walker had difficulty finding and settling into a seat in the dark, but with some assistance found one on the aisle. Several folks wore the devices designed specifically to enhance the sounds from the movie. The light from the screen illuminated a sea of white hair and bald pates.

This is a forgotten demographic, ignored by Hollywood's youthquake. These people enjoy movies, but they've accepted that they won't see many people of their vintage on the screen except as comic targets or in maudlin fare like "The Bucket List." Obviously, the positive word-of-mouth on "Young @ Heart" had brought them out to experience a cinematic rarity: a movie about older Americans that not only doesn't condescend but in fact elevates its subjects.

"Young @ Heart" is more real than any "reality" show - two people died during filming, for goodness sake - and filled with moments of high humor and quiet heroics that challenge the notions of young and old. At one point, a grandfather named Fred Knittle, suffering from congestive heart failure and four months beyond the two years his doctors had given him to live, toddles onstage with oxygen tank in tow and delivers a stirring rendition of Coldplay's "Fix You" that brings down the house. You couldn't manufacture a more powerful scene.

The film's sweet, funny tone catches hold from the title sequence, when a 92-year-old chorus member tunefully (sort of) asks that classic question posed by The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go," and continues through the choir's renditions of Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia," the Ramones' "I Wanna be Sedated" and Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." (And you haven't lived until you've watched Fred Knittle strut through a bowling alley in a video version of "Stayin' Alive.")

I suspect "Young @ Heart" will catch Hollywood's fancy and be refashioned into a feature film, much like the beautiful documentary "Small Wonders" was turned into the Meryl Streep vehicle "Music of the Heart."

I don't have a problem with that per se. These are good stories that can stand the retelling. But you do yourself a disservice by skipping the source material and going straight to the Hollywood rehash. "Young @ Heart" doesn't require the addition of a soundtrack - it already has a great one - and the movie's charm, involving these real people who we come to admire and root for, is not easily duplicated by actors.

Saturday's audience loved the film, laughing, applauding, rocking to music many of them had no business being familiar with (did they despise it when their kids played it? Their grandkids?), and even gasping when learning the sad fate of a couple of the singers. It had been a while since I've sat through a movie that evoked such a strong reaction, and I left the theater on a high note, pun intended.

So I gladly pass on the advice that was passed on to me: See "Young@ Heart." As of this writing, the movie was still playing at Showcase North, but if it's gone from the theaters, rent the DVD when it's released. In the interim, visit YouTube for a taste of that Fred Knittle magic

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: The "Young @ Heart" chorus.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS