Cocoon (1985)

When I first saw this film on video, I decided to rent a video player and visit my elderly parents...and they never had such a good time.My folks are gone now, and my stubborn dad, who hated practically everything, laughed is butt off. He hated movies, in general, but his reaction to "Cocoon" was gratifyting to me. I could analyze many aspects of the film, but there's little to say, other than the fact that the actors were in touch with their material and ran with it. Ron Howard made a more important film than he may know. To me, anyway... Every old folk should see this film.

A group of aliens arrives in a Florida retirement community to rescue their colleagues who have been cocooned and settled beneath the sea. The aliens unzip and zip on their human costumes the initial unveiling, witnessed by the boat captain, is beautiful and worthy of an award and stash their rescued buddies in the compound's swimming pool. The retirees, after swimming in the pool, experience personal rejuvenation: they make love like teenage boys, eat like athletes, and Don Ameche's Olympian diving performance is memorable in itself. And then the retirees, now in on the secret, are asked to choose between attaining immortality by leaving with the aliens or living our their lifespan on earth with their surviving loved ones.

Wonderful, heartening and heartbreaking, inspiring film, directed by Ron Howard, and soooo beautifully cast.

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This is one of the few movies I've seen that has really made me cry. Director Ron Howard scores it big with this wonderful movie, and the plot is verrrrry original; three old men who live at a retirement center sneak over to a close-by deserted house every day to take a swim in the swimming pool. But a group of aliens disguised as humans come down to earth to save some of their comrades that they left there thousands of years ago, who are now sealed in large rock-like cocoons beneath the ocean, and take them home. And when they put the cocoons in the swimming pool to keep them alive and the old men go for a swim, they come out feeling like a million bucks! This would be a perfect family film if it wasn't so sexual and vulgar at times (hence the PG-13 rating). But for nine years and up, this is a sure treat. Don Ameche does a wonderful job as one of the old men, and Steve Guttenberg is downright funny as the guy who owns the boat the aliens use, and has a love affair with one of the aliens, as well. It has good lessons on friendship and love, and is a tear-jerker at times. A VERY GOOD movie!

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This is one of my favorite films from Director Ron Howard. It's a highly original sci-fi story that is more character and story driven that is not heavily reliant on CGI, unlike a lot of what passes today for summer entermainment. The story involves a group of benevolent aliens who return to Earth near the Florida coast to retrieve some comrades that were left behind on a prior mission from the bottom of the ocean. They store their lifepods in a swimming pool that some local retirees use and to the surprise of the seniors the pool contains a rejuvenating lifeforce. The cast, particularly the older actors, are uniformly excellent. One minor qualm is the finale of the film is somewhat derivative of Spielberg; the aliens mothership even looks like the one in "Close Encounters". I had not seen this film since it's initial release and it holds up remarkably well.

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If you have read Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, please get to this film. A positive vision of Extraterrestrials. They are a world where people do not age, where there is no war, where is no disease, where there is no hatred. We can of course think there are no feelings either. Yet, there are and when they are confronted to the human world they discover feelings in no time, and those are not human at all, they are universal : the sadness of death, the sadness of leaving friends, and a few others, even love. Old people dream of living forever, even if it means being productive forever. There is nothing worse for pensioners than to be pensioners, that is to say people completely controled by rules and who have no productive activities for society or other people. A world of eternal productivity is a dream that only pensioners can afford. But it is the most human and the deepest feeling of them all. And this can only come from an estraterrestrial vision of the world. Will our society get to that level, ever, we don't know, we hope so, but we definitely cannot say it will happen ever. A marvelous film about aging and the drama of becoming useless for society, and a slave of dumb rules that deprive you of any freedom or free choice. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.

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