Movies

It's pretty cool to see a cover band rocking out to Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia" and the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go." But the Young at Heart Chorus isn't just any cover band. It's a dedicated group of senior citizens getting in touch with their inner rocker in the irresistible new doc Young at Heart, which opens today.

The chorus members weren't exactly strangers to rock. "I was used to the young people doing it," says 85-year-old Dora Morrow, whose son-in-law played drums for the late Junior Walker, during a recent stop in Dallas. "Now I'm doing what they were doing, and it's a lot of fun."

Bob Cilman has been running this show, based in Northampton, Mass., since 1983. Since then members have come and gone – death is frequently on the horizon in Young at Heart. But life is lived in abundance.

"We're like a big family now, after all these years," says 78-year-old Jack Schnepp, a chorus member for nine years. "We know each other's problems, and we help each other get through."

The idea came to Morgan Spurlock in early 2005. President Bush had just won his second term. A new taped message of the world's most wanted criminal had just materialized. The cable-news yakkers wanted to know: Where in the world is Osama bin Laden?

Good question, thought the filmmaker.

So the mischievous man behind Super Size Me embarked on his new project, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, a tongue-in-cheek travelogue through the Middle East, opening today, that kind of seeks to locate its title character.

Then something funny happened. Mr. Spurlock's wife became pregnant with the couple's first child. And his film's focus shifted a bit.

"There was no way to not think about it," says Mr. Spurlock during a recent Dallas visit. "As we were plotting out where we were going, I realized I wanted to meet some families – somebody like me, a young dad, a young Muslim, who could give me some fatherly advice and tell me about raising a kid in whatever country we were in."

Yes, there's something willfully naive about the whole enterprise. And no, the film doesn't answer its own question. (You might have heard by now if it had.)

But give him a little credit for trying.

Last but not least, we throw a little cold water on the Judd Apatow comedy parade.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up? Funny. Superbad? Pretty funny. But now it seems there's a new Apatow-produced comedy out every week. And it's fair to ask if the product is getting watered down.

Walk Hard, Drillbit Taylor and the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which closed the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, feel formulaic and fatigued. They all have wacky buddies, and two of them dip into the frontal-male-nudity well for quick laughs.

So slow down, Judd. Make comedies, not widgets. And let's hope the next production credit, for hometown boy David Gordon Green's Pineapple Express, breaks some new ground.