This film tells the story of Daniel McCormick, an aviator who decides to take part in an innovative scientific experiment with cryogenics after his girlfriend, whom he would ask to marry him, be run over by a car and enter the hospital with little chance of recovery. So the plot core is love, but don't think it's an overly romantic movie. It seems to me that the screenwriter has made some efforts to avoids losing himself in exaggerated romanticism. The cast is led by Mel Gibson and features Jamie Lee Curtis and young Elijah Wood in supporting roles. Gibson is the big star, standing out naturally. Despite that, he's not quite capable of showing feelings, not even surprise when he wakes from his sleep at a time that wasn't the expected. The other cast limits itself to follow him and give him what he needs, but does it easily. I liked the simple but effective way the movie recreates the Thirties and shows how time has gone by. Everything has been done subtly. Airplanes are a fundamental part of the film such as jazz, which fills it with elegance and provides a great soundtrack. It's one of those movies perfect for Valentine's Day, even after twenty-some years of its debut.

It's 1939. Captain Daniel McCormick (Mel Gibson) is an American test pilot. His lifelong girlfriend Helen gets run over and is stuck in a coma. His friend Harry Finley (George Wendt) is working on a secret cryogenics experiment. Daniel asks him to freeze him for a year or until Helen gets better. It's then present day. Nat Cooper (Elijah Wood) and his friend Felix are playing in an Army warehouse. They accidentally release the cryogenic pod. Nat's mother Claire (Jamie Lee Curtis) doesn't believe them. Nobody at the base believes Daniel either. Daniel tracks down the boys who help him to track down Finley.I want it to have more tension. It just doesn't have a great intensity. It tries to be romantic which is awkward because he was just parted from the love of his life. The aborted romance is indicative of a movie with a lot of possibilities but not as successful as it should be. I really like the first half but the movie has a bunch of little problems. I was OK with the movie until of course, Daniel has to fly the plane. It's like J. J. Abrams was a little too clever with the script. It's the same thing with the aging and the romantic ending. I just think the movie could be a lot better.

In 1939, military pilot Daniel McCormick's fiancée is comatose following being hit by a truck, so he volunteers to be experimentally cryogenically frozen. Overlooked in error, he is accidentally woken in 1992 at which point, with the help of a nurse and her son, he tries to make some sense of what has happened to him.Forget the science fiction element - the cryogenesis is unconvincing, and the "catch-up" ageing afterwards is, as far as I'm aware, completely without any sort of scientific or logical foundation.What you are left with is a romantic fable, cross-matched with some fish out of water humour, a dab of suspense, and some pleasing relationships between the characters.Curiously, the heart of the movie is not Mel Gibson (who is perfectly satisfactory as Daniel) nor Jamie Lee Curtis (whose samaritan nurse Claire is almost an incidental character), but 10-year old Elijah Wood who, even at that age, holds centre stage effortlessly for much of the film.Don't expect it to make any sense, and you may well enjoy it.

Some films are so brilliant, so lovely, so acutely heart felt, that sometimes they are impossible to even talk about, let alone do a review, no matter how hard you try, but ille try.There is a lot of intellectual comment on here that misses the heartfelt romance of the story, because the ending where Mel Gibson finds his lost love will make you weep for joy, and cry out loud at the same time.Lets face it, there cannot be a person anywhere in the world, who has not lost someone they cared about, and wanted to be with, and would give their right arm to find that person and be with them again, because this is at the core of the story of Forever Young.We can forget the intellectual cynicism in other Reviews, we can forget the implausibility of the story, we can just go along with Mel Gibson's character, and rejoice in the beautiful ending