Cineplexus

Earth ★★★1/2

Happy Earth Day, everyone. I consider myself part of the whole "Earth Day is Everyday" crowd, but I think it's great to really focus in our planet every April, especially now when we have so much work to do. But, hey, we're not here to get political; we're here to talk about Earth, DisneyNature's first big release, which is in theaters today.

Earth, which was released in 2007 in the UK, albeit in a slightly different form, and with a different narrator, is actually made up of footage culled from the groundbreaking hours-long special Planet Earth, which aired in 2006 on the BBC and in 2007 on the Discovery Channel. The British voice of Patrick Stewart was replaced with a slightly lower and more American one, that of James Earl Jones. The film, like the miniseries, has been distributed in other nations with other narrators as well.

If Earth's one goal was to portray a vast array of wildlife as beautiful and elemental, it succeeds. This is not surprising when you consider the astonishing and moving source material. But the film's big failing lies in its desperate aversion to anything that might seem political. Despite frequent mentions of the planet's changing climate, and how it is causing glaciers and rqunforests to shrink while deserts grow ever larger, Mr. Jones' booming voice is never heard naming humans, pollution, or dirty energy as the cause. One stray mention of mankind, injected into the middle, is the movie's most painfully didactic line: "This is the circle of life, that most of us in out urban lives have lost touch with."  

Spare me. If the film's editors truly wanted to keep things so tame, why keep bringing up the subject, only to drop it immediately? Decisions like these made the voice over, silken-toned though it was, seem heavy-handed. The gorgeous imagery speaks for itself; theres no need to be preachy.

Speaking of the gorgeous imagery...wow, is it ever gorgeous. While I didn't love every minute of Earth, there are parts of it I could watch over and over again for their stirring, often frightening beauty and rarity. The time-lapse video of blooming flowers is astonishing, the slo-mo footage of a great white shark is horrifying, and I found myself wishing the footage of birds of paradise would go on forever. Chances are, parts of the movie will strike every viewer that way. As such, the film creates an up-and-down montage of animal life which proves partly great, but only that. In fairness to the film, it seems to be aimed mostly at children and the impatient; anyone with an attention span would likely do better to stick with the original Planet Earth in all its 530 minutes of glory.

Young@Heart ★★★★

Let me pitch you a premise: A bunch of happy-go-lucky senior citizens decide to join a choir. A director young enough to be their son forces them to sing hits and rarities by the likes of the Ramones and Sonic Youth. At first they hate these songs, but they grow to love them, and the movie ends with a hugely successful concert performance to a sold-out auditorium.

This is precisely what occurs in Young@Heart, a new film by director Steven Walker. Sounds like a pretty lame comedy, right? And if the film were a raucous comedy about free-wheeling old fogies, it probably would have been awful. And completely absurd. But Young@Heart, despite some painfully hilarious moments, is no comedy. It's a documentary, and it follows the all-too-true story of a real-life senior choir and its members as they struggle to broaden their horizons and make the most of their golden years.

Originally shot for television in the UK, Young@Heart was shot in Northampton, MA. Despite the best efforts of a too-present narrator with a shaky camera, it's easy to forget all about the film's made-for-tv doc roots. With all the ups, downs, comedic relief, and surprising twists of a Hollywood production, we're taken through several weeks of choir rehearsals that lead up to a big show. These dramatic flourishes definitely work in the film's favor. Not only do they serve to draw the audience in, but they illustrate perfectly the strength and fragility of these unique and wonderful people. For them, the point and joy of life is merely to be alive and doing what you enjoy. This is a humbling message indeed, and it's to the film's credit that it lets this fact shine through the cracks in the group's carefree façade.

I went to Young@Heart expecting to laugh my ass off. And I did, at times. More than anything, though, I left the theater hoping that the choir will be performing soon at a theater near me. If not, maybe I'll just have to start up a Young@Heart choir of my own.