Critical Reception
Young@Heart received largely favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports 88% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 78 reviews, and Metacritic reports the film had an average score of 75 out of 100, based on 23 reviews.
Stephen Holden of the New York Times observed, "At moments the movie . . . risks being a cloying, rose-colored study of happy old folks at play, and the cheer sounds forced. But the lives of the several members it examines at some depth are too real and complicated to resemble a commercial starring Wilford Brimley as a Norman Rockwell grandpa. The movie offers an encouraging vision of old age in which the depression commonly associated with decrepitude is held at bay by music making, camaraderie and a sense of humor."
Steve Davis of the Austin Chronicle rated the film 3½ out of four stars. He felt that "despite an occasional lapse into nudge-nudge jokes about geriatric sex, incontinence, and the driving skills of the elderly," it "eschews the clichés about old people for something that we can all relate to: our own mortality."
The film was named the best of the year by Marc Mohan of The Oregonian, and it appeared on several top ten lists, including those of the New York Daily News and The Hollywood Reporter.
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