Cocoon

I watched this when it came out in 1985. I was 32. It was good back then. I just rewatched it in 2021. I am now 67. I have experinced firsthand elder parents and now my own age in the meantime. This movie is much more meaningful now. A great movie.

Six elderly people (Oscar-winner Don Ameche in more of a lifetime achievement award, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton and Gwen Verdon) start swimming at a locked up housed swimming pool that has strange pods in it and then start doing things that contradict their ages. Of course the pods really house aliens from another planet and they are the reasons for the "fountain of youth". Ron Howard's sympathetic and clever direction saves this uneven project that starts out as a pure comedy and then turns into a rough drama as the clock ticks away. Brian Dennehy and Steve Guttenberg shine in smart supporting roles. 4 stars out of 5.

This film completely surprised me first time. I thought it was your usual silly alien film - but it is so much more then that - and if it is possible the brilliant Ron Howard makes it all believable. Two things stand out among all else - the fantastic score (one of the best I have ever heard) The superb ending - which was one of the most original endings - possibly ever.

I just can't say enough about just how good this film is.

As far as performances go I was particularly surprised by the acting of the senior citizens especially Jack Gilford as the miserable old codger Bernie - I love it when he completely breaks down and softens after spending an hour and 20 minutes as the most awful old man you could ever have the misfortune to bump into - the transformation was immediate but so believable - and I personally think that performance was worthy of a supporting actor oscar.

Also Brian Dennehy, Wilford Brimley, Don Ameche and Steve Guttenburg were also excellent.

An all round fantastic film which everyone can enjoy - all ages

Cocoon is a charming science fiction fable by the underrated Ron Howard. Howard is an amiable, frequently baseball-capped figure who, in the 70's, became a familiar face through his 6 year stint as Richie in TV's Happy Days. Cocoon followed immediately after Splash! (1984), another successful fantasy. It exchanges the Tom Hanks figure featured in that film with a similar one played by Steve Guttenberg, another romantic innocent. But whereas in the earlier film Hanks had a central role, here Jack Bonner (Guttenberg) has far less prominence. This is perhaps because of Guttenberg's modest acting abilities, but principally so the narrative can focus more securely on the characters that matter – the community of senior citizens facing their twilight years at the Sunny Shores Retirement Center.

Cocoon's achievement as a film is all the more remarkable when one reflects upon the scarcity of active, old people in American cinema, let alone a group of them presented so positively in a state of sexual re awakening, then led to such an upbeat conclusion. Behind this apparent optimism, however, the thoughtful viewer can still reflect on some final doubts and uncertainties.

The central circle of old people, around whom events turn, together prove a fine acting ensemble. Arthur (a still svelte Don Ameche), Ben (Selwyn Wilford Brimley) Jo (Hume Cronyn), Bernie (Walter Gilford), Alma (Jessica Tandy), Bess (Gwen Verdon) and the others are a convincing unit, squabbling, relating and facing the end of their lives with cantankerous dignity which is entirely convincing. Tandy and Cronyn were married in real life. Many of film's most poignant moments of the film spring from the relationships between these people. The quiet passing of Rose for instance, and her husband's grief by her bedside. Notable too is the wooing by former song and dance man Ameche of his new lady love, a process during which he shows no lessening of time-honed screen courtesy and assurance. During the opening of the film, Arthur and Jo's witnessing of an unsuccessful resuscitation is a stark reminder of the mortality of the principals, sadly off and on screen. Cocoon was a last hurrah for many of the elderly cast (although one or two survived advancing years to appear in the terrible Cocoon 2(1988)).

The other major character group are the Antareans. Here too a refreshing leap out of the stereotypical is taken as the aliens prove reasonable, non aggressive and forgiving – perhaps characteristics inspired by Spielberg's influential and amenable ET (1982) or the religiosity of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Jack Bonner's near hysterical reaction to their initial unmasking ('If you try and eat my face off you'll be very, very sorry'), his following conversion then inevitable dalliance, are all handled with an effective lightness. Even Howard's depiction of an alien orgasm on screen as Jack romances Kitty (Tahnee Welch) without touching, in the life giving pool, is done sensitively. It is perhaps the most striking moment of its sort in Science Fiction cinema since Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973). Cocoon is a film in which sexual energy is equated closely to an amplified life force and is seen as both positive and welcome. Both young and old feel the replenishment of their passion, directly or indirectly, in connection with the cocoon tank. Here the items retrieved from the sea are settled at the bottom, somewhat ominous reminders of a life to come. The title itself is suggestive, not only of the typical dormacy of a chrysalis, but of impending rebirth such an object heralds. As the oldsters rejuvenate with the 'fountain of youth', they find new meaning and value in their lives, a belated development which even leads to the sad break up of families. The desire for life can be selfish, even when healthily expressed, and some prefer to 'stick with the hand nature has given' them.

The Antarean's recovery of their 'ground crew' is what brings them to earth. While their leader's account of them having originally lodged themselves in what was Atlantis is slightly hoary (their bases apparently having sunk during the 'first great upheaval') the film wisely seers away from too much alien hardware. Apart from the pretty device on the deck of Bonner's boat, and the splendours of the returning mother ship, very little technology is glimpsed. The Antareans are certainly strange, but lacking much hard evidence of their difference enables the audience to relate to them easily. Even their unskinning, as they emerge as their true, shining selves, is a wonderous event, a shining transfiguration with no implicit threat to humanity.

These are aliens associated with whiteness and with life, forgiving and considerate, exhibiting 'christian' values. They radiate and float like angels when emerging from human covering, and their ship takes the departing OAPs up into the light. Hollywood readily associates such light with the rewards of heaven (for other examples of the brilliance bestowed upon the departing see The Frighteners (1996) or Jacob's Ladder (1990). Substitute the pool of life for baptism, the smiling Walter (Brian Dennehy) for a prophet, and Cocoon's alien spaceship might just as easily be the Gabriel leading the faithful to paradise.

But what of the end of the film? Is it really as happy and as affirmative as it first seems? Bonner has made great play with his responsibility as a skipper in an earlier scene with Kitty. At the conclusion he might, therefore, reasonably be held to account for his loss of a cargo of elderly transportees. At least one extended family is broken up by their leaving. And Walter has to return home, his mission a failure, together with a boatload of unexpected guests. At the least the final ascension is a complex event, leaving some tensions unresolved. That Cocoon manages to hold all these elements together in a satisfying whole is one reason to seek it out. To enjoy a warm hearted family film is another.

1985's Cocoon, directed by Ron Howard, asks - would you give up the emotional, mental and physical pain of growing old if you could?

Baby boomers today feel that death is optional and seek out whatever it takes to make them feel and look young - so if Cocoon came out in 2008, it would perhaps resonate even more.

The story takes place in a rest home inhabited by a group of friends: Arthur (Don Ameche), Benjamin (Wilford Brimley) and his wife Marilyn (Maureen Stapleton), Joseph (Hume Cronyn) and his wife Alma (Jessica Tandy) and a perky red-head Bess (Gwen Verdon). The guys have taken to going to an abandoned pool house and swimming - without permission, of course.

Then the building is rented by a man (Brian Dennehy). This same man also rents a boat from Jack Bonner (Steve Guttenberg), who is down on his luck and can use the money. He watches Jack, his beautiful assistant Kitty (Tahnee Welch) and some other people skindiving and bringing up huge silver packages. These packages are then dumped into the pool.

After the men swim there one day, they find themselves suddenly rejuvenated and start having sex, staying up, nightclubbing and having more energy. Meantime, on the boat, Jack has gotten a look at Kitty getting ready for bed...and notices that she removes her skin as well as her clothes and glows in the dark.

This movie has many poignant moments - Alma coming to grips with the fact that her husband has always cheated, and the saddest of all, when Bernard (Jack Gilford) who has been violently opposed to the whole idea of the pool as a fountain of youth, desperately brings his wife there.

Howard cast this with an eye toward man's normal immortality - children - with Raquel Welch's daughter and Tyrone Power's son, Tyrone Power Jr. As Pillsbury - while telling the story of people who have a chance at a different kind of immortality. Both Power and Welch bear strong resemblance to their famous parents.

The old-timers in the cast are among the greatest actors of their generation and sadly, we've lost nearly all of them now. Only Wilford Brimley remains. The film revived Don Ameche's career, and the cast returned for a sequel, "Cocoon: The Return."

A wonderful film to see the old stars in a very touching story and to ask yourself - if you had the chance, would you take it?