Film Review: Cocoon
In 1985 after just releasing the hit SPLASH director Ron Howard’s COCOON took the multiplex by surprise and delivered a heart warming tale about a group of other-worldly beings on a rescue mission to save their kind from human kind. Not more than three years earlier did E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL show a kinder side to the alien agenda and COCOON would only be one of many that would follow suit.
What sets this film apart from the other dredge that was produced at the time was that the majority of the cast were aging stars Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Jack Gilford, Jessica Tandy, and Gwen Verdon, among others. Although the film was told through the point of view of a child (i.e. E.T.), the film was really about a group of elderly people who never wanted to loose their sense of identity which in the film manifests itself in ageism. The film asks one of the greatest questions posed to the human existence, “If you had the chance for eternal life (or youth as it may be) would you take it?” It’s a question that’s plagued mankind from the Fountain of Youth to vampirism.
COCOON works because it never talks down to its audience and even though there are some heavy themes sown throughout it cleverly mixes humor with “human-emotion” for the rare feel-good type of film that at the time Howard was known for. It also works because it was a film that was needed just like E.T. was.
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