Cocoon

E.T. for senior citizens, Cocoon is an unremittingly corny fantasy about a trio of retirement village habitués (Wilford Brimley, Don Ameche, and Hume Cronyn) who stumble across a swimming pool full of huge pods which infuse the water with a rejuvenating life force. It turns out that the pod are being stored by friendly extraterrestrials headed up by Brian Dennehy who have come to Earth to retrieve them after a 10,000 year delay.

Whilst the core premise is bordering on an insult to the intelligence, the film is poorly structured as the best of the film comes early in the piece as the old coots rediscover their party pants. The sight of Don Ameche (OK, his stunt double) break dancing is an amusing one but the film rapidly runs out of steam once the comedic potential of this twilight turnaround has been played out. There are other narrative strands in the form of the relationship between Steve Guttenberg’s young cruise boat captain and a spunky alien played by Tahnee Welch (daughter of Raquel) but this is given a standard asexual 80s treatment and the old geezers' wives (Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy and Gwen Verdon) are introduced but they remain second string players. There's a pass at introducing some texture to proceedings with one of the denizens (Jack Gilford) refusing to drink from the fountain of youth but it's all too tokenistic to have any dramatic purchase   All up, it's sub-Spielbergian glom for those in their second childhood.

Despite being a superficial and thoroughly uninspired affair, Cocoon had the good fortune to be released to little competition and became a box office hit, effectively kick-starting Ron Howard’s move into the big league.

FYI: The film  was followed by a 1988 sequel Cocoon: The Return but, unsurprisingly, the gimmick was well and truly played out. 

 

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