From Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, creators of the recent critically acclaimed film American Splendor, The Young and the Dead is an HBO Films documentary about a cemetery—specifically, a celebrity-filled cemetery in Hollywood that has been given a new lease on life (pun intended).

Welcome to Hollywood Forever, the resurrected cemetery that was once called Hollywood Memorial Park. It sits next door to Paramount Pictures and is the final resting place of such old-Hollywood celebrities as Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Power, Jayne Mansfield (actually, just a headstone), and Nelson Eddy. Hollywood Memorial Park had fallen into sad disrepair, and now a new high-minded, technology-oriented management team has burst on the Hollywood interment scene, full of 21^st Century verve and unusual ideas.

Imagine a final resting place where your friends and relatives can visit your grave and then watch a memorial video about you in one of the cemetery's many viewing kiosks throughout the grounds. Alternatively, they could even visit the cemetery's Web site ( http://www.hollywoodforever.com) and download your memorial to their hard disk. The video is respectfully and carefully made by Hollywood Forever's staff with the cooperation of loved ones who have access to all the stories and photographs of your life. In this way, Hollywood Forever can help you ensure that your legacy lives forever, even in cyberspace.

The Young and the Dead is a modestly entertaining documentary, weaving stories of the creation of said memorials with odd stories of celebrity obsession. Perhaps the best portion of the documentary involves Hattie McDaniel (Gone with the Wind), who was denied burial in the cemetery by the original owner because of her race. Today, under the new management, McDaniel and her ancestors are finally permitted onto the cemetery grounds. This story leads into a humorous attack on the original owner's character—call it a memorial video of his own. There's also a long sequence about the rabid fans of Rudolph Valentino, who hold an annual celebration for him.

The documentary definitely contains some fascinating scenes, as well as some exceedingly strange people, but when all is said and done, it's a bit forgettable. The stories it has to tell will occasionally make you chuckle, or murmur "Only in Hollywood," but it doesn't contain a single story that will really grab you. Owner Tyler Cassity has definite screen presence and could himself be a leading man, but his cool good looks and calm demeanor result in a bland persona onscreen. And the rest of the crew comes across as equally uninteresting: All their sound bites about the preciousness of life just leave me feeling "Eh."

HBO Films presents The Young and the Dead in a serviceable full-frame transfer of the documentary's original 1.33:1 cable-TV presentation. The shot-on-video image merely gets the job done, offering a generous level of detail that reaches into backgrounds. Colors are solid, with perfectly pink skin tones and vivid green for the cemetery foliage, although sometimes the palette seems a bit washed out. Blacks aren't terribly deep.

The fact that this is a shot-on-video presentation introduces problems. There's a fair amount of shimmering, mosquito noise, and aliasing in evidence. Also, I noticed the telltale halos and ringing of artificial edge enhancement—nothing major, but distracting nonetheless.

The disc's Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track is perfectly in service of the material. Don't expect any audio fireworks, but at least dialog is clear.

Nothin'.

The Young and the Dead provides a mildly amusing look at a cemetery that could only happen in Hollywood. Some of the ideas in this film will make you laugh, but it all comes across as rather bland. It's worth a rental, though.