This is not a good movie, but I recommend watching it for the few good points it contains.
The bad news: It's full of stereotypes, including one that I particularly detest (Elsa the aging female hippie, whom you're supposed to love because she breaks all those staid conventional rules). The character of Fred starts out equally stereotypical (though it becomes more believable).
So why watch the film? There are moments of almost profound emotion (almost, I repeat) that strike a deep chord among those of us who are about as old as Elsa and Fred. We know their problems intuitively. Chief among these problems, of course, is the nearness and reality of Death (with a capital D). The film occasionally gets deep enough inside the characters to reveal the ways they might be dealing with the approaching end of their lives.
Again--as a film, this film falls flat. I had the feeling it was constructed out of ten hours of film that were designed to appear as a television series or a much longer film. As the film is constructed and edited, Fred's transition from despairing jerk to fun-loving jokester comes across as far too sudden and without credible development. And I found the end of the film especially unsatisfactory. Elsa dies, and Fred is left alone in the same despairing situation he was in at the start of the movie. The movie hints that he bounces back with the new energy he got from Elsa, but her permanent disappearance makes that happiness seem most unlikely. (Don't get me wrong: ambiguous and sad endings are fine, but this one was poorly developed).
One last reason, perhaps, to see the film: The appearance of aging and very solid stars (Segal, et al.) gives the movie a lot of heft. If they had been moved to the center of the action, the producers would have had a much better movie on their hands.
The bad news: It's full of stereotypes, including one that I particularly detest (Elsa the aging female hippie, whom you're supposed to love because she breaks all those staid conventional rules). The character of Fred starts out equally stereotypical (though it becomes more believable).
So why watch the film? There are moments of almost profound emotion (almost, I repeat) that strike a deep chord among those of us who are about as old as Elsa and Fred. We know their problems intuitively. Chief among these problems, of course, is the nearness and reality of Death (with a capital D). The film occasionally gets deep enough inside the characters to reveal the ways they might be dealing with the approaching end of their lives.
Again--as a film, this film falls flat. I had the feeling it was constructed out of ten hours of film that were designed to appear as a television series or a much longer film. As the film is constructed and edited, Fred's transition from despairing jerk to fun-loving jokester comes across as far too sudden and without credible development. And I found the end of the film especially unsatisfactory. Elsa dies, and Fred is left alone in the same despairing situation he was in at the start of the movie. The movie hints that he bounces back with the new energy he got from Elsa, but her permanent disappearance makes that happiness seem most unlikely. (Don't get me wrong: ambiguous and sad endings are fine, but this one was poorly developed).
One last reason, perhaps, to see the film: The appearance of aging and very solid stars (Segal, et al.) gives the movie a lot of heft. If they had been moved to the center of the action, the producers would have had a much better movie on their hands.