I walked into Heart Of Gold thinking I was going to watch a documentary about Neil Young. Instead, I witnessed a self-serving tribute to the arrogance of aging baby boomers who have lost their edge and forgotten their roots. Highly rated by aging baby boomer critics, directed and performed by more aging baby boomer artists, Heart Of Gold is a bore-fest from start to finish, that is if you can manage to sit through the entire near 2 hour movie. Neil Young and crew have long lost their edge and want the rest of us to join them on a cushioned rocking chair of middle-of-the-road mediocrity. What happened to the raunchy guitar of his earlier solo efforts? I guess all of his fuzz boxes rusted out and his over-driven vacuum tubes exploded in the hot air of his generation. As far as Demme goes, this is the daring director of Something Wild & Melvin And Howard? A student filmmaker could have made a more daring film than this poorly visualized surface performance film. Don't waste your $$ on Heart Of Gold and go straight to The Last Waltz and Gimmie Shelter. And if you really want to dig deep into the personality of a rock and roll icon, scrounge up a copy of Chuck Berry: Hail Hail Rock And Roll which is sorely out of print. And baby boomers, don't bother squawking about how this review is jaded by someone younger. I too am one of those baby boomers who listened to Cinnamon Girl on acid and danced in the streets to the Stones' Street Fighting Man. Go back and watch Don't Look Back or Gimmie Shelter and then come back and tell me that Heart of Gold has any worth as a document.
Review of Neil Young: Heart of Gold
