text: This is a classic stinker with a big named cast, mostly seniors who were well past their prime and bedtime in this one.<br /><br />This is quite a depressing film when you think about it. Remain on earth, and you will face illness and eventually your demise.<br /><br />Gwen Verndon showed that she could still dance. Too bad the movie didn't concentrate more on that. Maureen Stapleton, looking haggard, still displayed those steps from "Queen of the Star Dust Ballroom," so much more down to earth from 10 years earlier.<br /><br />I only hope that this film doesn't encourage seniors to commit mass suicide on the level of Jim Jones. How can anyone be idiotic enough to like this and say it gets you to think?<br /><br />Why did Don Ameche win an Oscar for this nonsense?<br /><br />If the seniors were doing such a wonderful thing at the end, why was the youngster encouraged to get off the boat? Why did Steve Guttenberg jump ship as well? After all, he had found his lady-love. <br /><br />This would have been a nice film if the seniors had just managed to find their fountain of youth on earth and stay there.<br /><br />Sadly, with the exception of Wilford Brimley, at this writing, Vernon, Gilford, Stapleton, Ameche, Tandy, Cronyn and lord knows who else are all gone. The writers should have taken the screenplay and placed it with this group as well.