YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN
In YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN, an age-obsessed daughter of a plastic surgeon (filmmaker Mitch McCabe) takes a journey through America's $60 billion a year Anti-Aging world. In this Alice-in-Wonderland tale, McCabe spends 2 years traveling across America visiting doctors, experts and living with a cross-section of characters from Minnesota to Texas who've gone to varying lengths to "beat the clock", painting a funny but troubling portrait of a country that desperately needs to stay forever young. Along the way, one wonders if the filmmaker herself hasn't been pulled in by the seduction of youth.
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"Youth Knows No Pain" subjects America's anti-aging obsession to an intimate, often unflattering close-up, and with an appreciable lack of vanity, director Mitch McCabe also holds up her own face -- lines, imperfections and all -- for the camera's scrutiny. McCabe's unique perspective as a plastic surgeon's daughter informs this lively, candid and thoughtful piece, which avoids the fashionable alarmism of so many social-issue docs as it weighs the costs and benefits of wrinkle creams, breast implants and Botox injections and allows viewers to decide for themselves. Airing Aug. 31 on HBO, the highly accessible pic could operate well in theaters.
-Justin Chang
VARIETY
Refreshingly free of moralizing, McCabe establishes early on that she, too, struggles with the idea of aging… Youth Knows No Pain was engrossing, depressing, and thought-provoking, made even more poignant by the candid self-examination of its creator.
-Latoya Peterson
Jezebel
"Filmmaker Mitch McCabe, the daughter of a pioneering plastic surgeon, gets up close and personal with "Youth Knows No Pain," an amusing, thoughtful doc that navigates the fine lines and unsightly crinkles to reach the insecurities lurking all too close to the surface…."
-Michael Rechtshaffen
Hollywood Reporter