526. Cocoon (1985)

Starring: Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn

Director: Ron Howard

Running Time: 117 mins

Cocoon is an American film about a group of retired people who find a ‘magical’ swimming pool nearby their retirement home, which seems to bring them back their youth, however it is in fact a base for a group of outer-space aliens attempting to rescue members of their race from Earth, where they were lost 10,000 years ago.

This film was pretty dull. It may have had its funny moments, and a seemingly fun concept, however it was definitely one of the most poorly-paced and dated comedy films that I’ve seen in a long time, and it rarely managed to properly entertain me, which was quite a disappointment.

The biggest problem with this whole film was its absolutely terrible pacing. It’s possibly the slowest-starting comedy I’ve ever seen, and the weird thing is, not until the final stages of the very first, 40 minute-long, phase, absolutely nothing happened to establish the film.

During that period, the main characters are introduced to you, but apart from that, there’s no development of them, nothing to deepen your knowledge of what the hell is going on in a film that gets very very gradually out of control in terms of its plot, ultimately leaving you completely entangled in the mess that is the story.

All the alien stuff was also surprisingly dull to see. The aliens are firstly shown to you as aliens wearing human skin as a ‘disguise’, which is a bit boring, and then when they show, (as some of the most unimpressive CGI I’ve ever seen, even for an 80s film), they just seem a little bit preposterous, even for aliens, which is an even bigger disappointment.

Basically, someone in the board meeting before the making of this film saw Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and said, “We can make this funnier by making it ALIENS v. OLD PEOPLE”, however this doesn’t really work in the end, and only seems like a simple blockbuster designed just for the box office.

Overall, I’ll give this a 5.3, because it was a a dull, largely unfunny and incredibly slow film that was never as entertaining as its premise would make it appear.