Heavy metal sits one step below nonstop Polka music in my “favorites” list, and a traditional documentary about a dissolved local Florida band sounds like a world-class yawn, but I’m Too Old for this Sh*t doesn’t depend on any of that. It’s the coming-of-age/dream-come-true story of a few middle-aged, middle-class guys who fulfill their lifelong dream thanks to a random German who loved their group 38 years ago; their story is presented with humor, compassion and first-rate editing throughout.

The central character is, incredibly, the drummer, software engineer Ed Aborn, who—equally incredibly—is the only band member who’s completely left music. After a slightly confusing introduction to a reasonably large cast of characters, both in their present-day and glory-days incarnations, the story revolves around four members of the band Siren (Ed Aborn, Doug Lee, Gregg Culbertson and Faxon) and their proactive German fan Frank Headbanger, who convinced a promoter in Germany to bring Siren over for a one-nighter at his Keep It Real Festival.

For 10 or 11 months, these suburban guys practice, plan and work their asses off to make their youthful dream of playing to a large cheering crowd come true. We see Ed Aborn watering his shrubs and cleaning the litterbox, watch the reunion of guys who haven’t seen one another in decades, and wince at the mishaps of international touring when they’ve never done it before.  Culbertson keeps wandering off, some members hadn’t been through airport security since before 9/11,  and it took a band meeting to figure out how to flush a German toilet.

German fans repeat, over and over, how seeing Siren live is a “dream come true,” while the band says playing a gig like this is “a dream come true.” Overall, the film is warmly funny, but also genuinely touching, as when Culbertson fights back tears, describing the festival as his “Metal Woodstock,” and comparing the importance of this experience to meeting his wife and having his children. Aborn describes the experience as “the dream of the 20-year-old me, realized.”

I’m Too Old for this Sh*t is well directed, moves along at an efficient clip and makes particularly good use of an editing technique which shows interviewees either finishing one another’s sentences or repeating the same words, which could feel manipulative or forced, but here is just charming. The one bone I would pick here is the title: it should have been Never Too Old for this Sh*t.

Download or buy it, because you’re going to watch it more than once.

—Suzanne Cadgène