The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club

A very enjoyable movie, although if you live in southeast Florida, you may be able to relate to these characters better. The one thing that really got to me was that you were observing characters whose best years were behind them, which were being portrayed by actors whose best years are also behind them, and who you remember thirty years ago. When you see the character portrayed by Dyan Cannon and you remember what Dyan Cannon looked like thirty years ago, you can relate to the character's life situation with even more sympathy and compassion; it's like you really knew what this this character was like many years ago when she was hot and vital and young.

Director/co-screenwriter Susan Seidelman is to be congratulated for a movie based on a generation just about totally forgotten in the movies today: seniors. "Old age is not for sissies" says one of the Tshirts in the movie which mainly takes place at a retirement centre in Florida.

Unfortunately it is pretty formulaic with a few truly poignant moments scattered throughout - enough to engage this viewer and hope for more.

Sadly, they remained just a few. Striking performance by Brenda Vaccaro, what a delight, Len Cariou in one of his best performances and Joseph Bologna showing vulnerability. The rest of the cast are more notable for their surgical procedures which border on truly grotesque in the cases of Sally Kellerman and Dyan Cannon.

Maybe one of these days there will be a movie made showing seniors as they really are, with a truly good plot not centred around snaring a man or woman to make them feel complete. And without the distracting trout pouts favoured by far too many.

Not likely, I know.

6 out of 10 for daring to be different.

"Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses." Maggie Kuhn

Our perception of seniors in the media has recently been formed by Jerry Seinfeld's parents in a Florida retirement community. They and their aging friends are unrelentingly argumentative, early-bird dining Jewish retirees who look and act old. Susan Seidelman's Boynton Beach Club, however, will have none of that old stereotyping.

As if they were older siblings of the emerging boomer solipsists, these seniors are generally vital, best exemplified by Dyan Cannon's lithesome body but suspiciously tight face, Sally Kellerman's lean and sensual mien, and Brenda Vaccaro's vulnerable enthusiasm. All have reason to be down, for they have lost their spouses but are gaining friends to share their grief with and possibly their lives. Enter the objects of their search for companionship, among others, Joe Bologna's Harry and Len Cariou's Jack, the former a self-proclaimed ladies' man, the latter a shy recent widow lacking skills to cope with mature women.

Unlike the seniors in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, Manna from Heaven, In her Shoes, and Golden Girls, the principals in Boynton Beach only occasionally resort to jokes about their age or ailments and prescription drugs, the ties that bind elderly everywhere but here are minimized by one reference to Viagra and one to old men who are not even ogling women when they drool. Here the seniors are actively living and loving, something the rest of the world does as well.

This dramedy is as satisfying as an afternoon drink on the veranda with a favorite granddaughter, at which happy occasion there is cause to celebrate being alive and connected between generations with nary a nod to senility.

I saw this movie, shown to a packed house and introduced by the director, Susan Seidleman, at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The audience, including me, loved it. It's funny and touching. It's so rare that a movie portrays the lives and especially loves of the older generations with anything approaching this level of authenticity and charm. Wonderful performances by people you love and don't see enough of. The movie used music to excellent effect as well. A bit of trivia -- the director's mother, who lives in the real Boynton Beach development for "active seniors," suggested the story and actually wrote the first draft of the screenplay as well as produced the movie.

This is a movie the allows an older person to still believe there is a future. Romance can come to the over 40 set and be wonderful. Len Cariou is great and believable as is the ensemble cast. Great movie. The story is the human strain and the cast lets you into the human feeling of the senior community of Florida. However, the story is universal.

I recommend this to anyone over the age that they think it's "all over" when you age. This is a forever young movie. I laughed and cried.

My only regret is that it is in limited distribution. It should be shown in the large multiplexes and get a wider audience.