Review for Cocoon

Introduction

I’ve come full circle! Way back when I first started reviewing for this site, one of the first discs that I was sent for review was the Cocoon DVD, released in the UK by Twentieth Century Fox. It was actually the 8th disc that I reviewed for what was then DVD Reviewer. Look it up if you want to see the exact date, but suffice it to say that now that I’m looking at the Eureka Entertainment, Masters of Cinema release of Cocoon, the UK Blu-ray debut, I’m closer in age now to the senior citizens in this film than I was to the grandson when I first reviewed it. That’s the kind of realisation that can keep you awake, dwelling on your thoughts at three o’clock in the morning. Before the imminent depression overwhelms, onwards with the review!

Art Selwyn, Ben Luckett and Joe Finley are three friends who are living out their twilight years in a retirement home by the sea. Joe is coming to terms with terminal cancer and to escape their rather morbid environment, the friends trespass in a disused house next door to take advantage of the swimming pool. However their illicit sojourns are halted when four new visitors move into the house. These four strangers have hired a boat and its owner, Jack Bonner to take them out into the Atlantic, where they retrieve large rocky objects to store in the pool. The three elderly friends don’t remain dissuaded for long, and begin swimming in the pool while the strangers are at sea. The odd objects have a weird effect on the swimmers though and they begin to feel rejuvenated. Initially it’s as if the pool is having the same effect as Viagra, but when Joe’s cancer goes into remission it appears that they have found a fountain of youth. Meanwhile, Jack’s curiosity leads him into trouble when his peeping tom act leads him to witness one of his mysterious passengers take more than just her clothes off.

Picture

The old DVD wasn’t too bad in terms of transfer, even though Twentieth Century Fox gave it the standard, back catalogue treatment in the UK, just stuck it on the disc with a minimum of extras, and no clean-up whatsoever. For its 25th Anniversary, Cocoon got a Blu-ray release in the US, and I guess that it’s the same print that used here for the 30th Anniversary (although technically it’s the 31st). Cocoon definitely has seen a little sprucing up for its HD release, certainly the print is clean of dirt and similar signs of age, colours are fresh and vivid, with the location filming really coming to life here. The image is clear and sharp throughout, but any restoration has refrained from added processing. There’s a slight organic wobble to the film (always evident in optically created credit sequences where the text isn’t quite stable), there’s a discreet but even layer of film grain, and the film’s detail comes across with the expected Blu-ray clarity. You do have the usual problem with 80s film stock feeling a little faded, and never impressing with dark detail, but that’s a common complaint. The high definition has the added detriment of making the seams in the alien effects shots and costumes even more apparent (Kitty’s first reveal is a case in point).

The images in this review were kindly supplied by Eureka Entertainment.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround and PCM 2.0 Stereo English. The stereo would have been the preferable option, as it’s cleaner, crisper, and the dialogue is clear, while Prologic opens up the front sound-stage to give it more presence; only on my Panasonic Blu-ray player the stereo was a smidge out of sync. That’s not the problem with the lossless surround option, but it is a little muddier in comparison, most notably in some of the dialogue. The surround still keeps things mostly front and centre, but there is more in the way of discreet placement of effects, and James Horner’s score gets a bigger surround oomph.

Extras

If there’s one thing that the UK DVD lacked, it was extra features. That’s not the problem with Eureka’s Blu-ray, although it has lifted most of its extra features from the 2004 US DVD release; there’s a whole lot of up-scaling going on.

The disc boots straight to a static menu.

The audio commentary from director Ron Howard is gappy, but informative, and he’s a genial and precise speaker.

There are five featurettes on the disc, all in 1080i, scaled up, Behind the Scenes (6:56), Ron Howard Profile (2:34), Underwater Training (3:35), Actors (2:52), and Creating Antareans (3:36), and most of them are over before they have a chance to get interesting.

You get 3 TV spots running to about half a minute each. It’s interesting how the third TV spot focuses on Kitty and Jack’s relationship, completely failing to mention the OAPs.

The Original Theatrical Trailer, the Teaser Trailer, and the trailer for Cocoon: The Return are all in full HD.

Finally on the disc, and unique to the Eureka Blu-ray is the Isolated Music and Effects track, presented in DD 5.1, and where you can get the James Horner music, unadulterated by anything as crass as dialogue.

This being a Masters of Cinema release, you also get a 20-page collector’s booklet featuring an essay by James Oliver.

Conclusion

Cocoon feels more like a cheat now, than it did all those years ago on DVD, and all those extra years ago when it was first released. There’s a scene at the end of the film typifying this, a service for the recently departed. His mother is grieving for the loss of her parents, but grandson David looks back with a smile on his face, as he knows the truth that his grandparents have gone to a literally better place, not just a metaphorical one. It never did before, but last night that struck me as really quite cruel. That’s not the kind of secret a boy should keep from his mother. But then the film is about cheating, cheating death, and cheating the aging process.


I also felt cheated by the aliens in Cocoon, who are really just glowy humans. Their technology may be more advanced, their powers fantastic, but in terms of their personalities, how they relate to people, they’re really normal, everyday folk, no sense of difference or culture clash. I also feel cheated by the Jack Bonner, Kitty non-romance, which never really sparkles, let alone goes anywhere. It’s a story that doesn’t quite work for me anymore; it makes more fairy tale, magic sense than it does common sense when it comes to motivation and character intent.

Where Cocoon still succeeds is in the comedy, and in the character observations of the older generation. The comedy has a light but effective touch, one that works on the strength of the characters and their interactions, although the painful Don Ameche breakdancing scene, becomes an even more painful breakdancer in an obvious Don Ameche mask scene in HD. But seeing the then golden generation of Hollywood still in their prime as actors makes this film special. In an industry that thrives on youth, the pursuit of youth, and maintaining that youth through whatever medical and surgical means possible, a film that shows old people as old is still 30 years on, something of a revelation. We fear the inevitable, shy away from mortality, but there’s a dispiriting reality about how this film depicts the retirement community that we should be aware of.


People of any age have just as much to give as they wish to, and are able to, yet we tend to write them off once the pension cheques start rolling in. This film has a verisimilitude that really does impress, the spectre of mortality, problems like dementia, and other illnesses, the acceptance of old age, or the refusal to grow old gracefully, or the patronising dismissal of some ‘carers’, these are all things that at a younger age we put to the back of the mind, hope to forever avoid, but Cocoon does us a service in showing us these things, relatively unvarnished, but doing so with a sense of warmth, hope and humour, reminding us that getting old is not to be feared, but to be looked forward to.