Cocoon

Discovering the "fountain of youth"

On the surface "Cocoon" (1985) is about elderly folks at a retirement home in Florida unknowingly finding the "fountain of youth" via a pool on an adjacent property. A peculiar group of people rent the property to store boulder-like objects they take from the bottom of the ocean. As such, the pool acquires healing powers and restore's the old folk's youthful vigor.

Steve Guttenberg stars as the likable protagonist, the boat owner/operator who helps the people get to the objects in the ocean, but he has no idea what's really going on. The stunning Tahnee Welch, Raquel's daughter, plays one of the members of the peculiar group to whom Guttenberg's character takes a liking. Unlike Raquel, who's k...

It deserves to be remembered nowadays.

I think the 80's were, maybe, the golden age of alien movies. Between comedies or horror films, the quality is quite satisfactory and there is plenty to choose from. This film is, however, one of the least known, perhaps due to the light way in which everything was approached, and it has even fallen into unfair oblivion today. For me, it was a movie that worked better precisely because of that, not least because I'm not a particularly big fan of alien movies.

The film, in fact, is a very light and familiar comedy, pleasant and not made to think too much, nor to be an award-winning film. I really got the feeling that it was an unpretentious project that, at the time, gave very good results, ha...