Featuring Appearances From: Ray Bradbury, Phyllis Diller, Jack & Elaine LaLanne, Buster Martin, Willard Scott, Suzanne Somers, and many others.
Directed by: Mark Wexler
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 1hr 34min
Distributed by: Variance Films
By John Delia
Living forever is wacky, whimsical and downright fantasy, but that’s from my point of view. The documentary on How To Live Forever shows real people who have broke through the over a 100 age ceiling. This serious approach to an age-old quest is a must watch for the optimistic and a fun film for us dreamers.
Documentary filmmaker/director Mark Wexler takes us on a worldwide trip investigating what it means to grow old and how one can live forever. He makes no bones about interviewing most any aging person, but they are mostly in there nineties. Take Jack LaLanne for instance, he achieved a ripe old age exercising and dancing. Wexler even interviews a 101-year-old chain-smoking beer swilling long distance runner for his point of view.
And most everyone probably wishes they will be fit in his nineties, but unless you really want to get there it looks like your genes have to help you along. Wexler asks; “If I offered you a pill that would allow you to live to be 500, would you take it.†My answer would be a question; “If you told me that in the future there would be a pill that would allow me to go back in the past knowing what I know, would I take it?†Ooo Yah! Now that’s worth living for.
The film gets a little repetitive at times interviewing alike people, but after all its just entertainment. I liked the scene where Wexler shows that you can even be cryogenically preserved so that someday when there is a cure for whatever you died they just have to thaw you out. If I understood Wexler correctly, there is already a waiting list in an Arizona facility.
I could poke some good-natured fun at How To Live Forever like “What do you do when your dominos partner checks out?†but that would not be cool. After all Wexler is very serious about his study and I recommend it to all those geriatrics that are crowded around the television at their nursing home. They would certainly have a good laugh at the 80% if the population that doesn’t live beyond 75.
Oh, not a spoiler, but the world’s oldest living person is NOT in Iceland. Could this have something to do with global warming?
FINAL ANALYSIS: A seriously humorous look at aging or ‘What you really wanted to know, but now you don’t’. (B-)