Cocoon (DVD, 15): The mid-eighties brought us many quirky sci-fi movies, and Cocoon was one of the more memorable, because its premise, old people grow young, is an intriguing, if unoriginal, one.

The plot is pretty basic: Some old people find that their neighbour's swimming pool, which contains the mysterious cocoons of the title, has rejuvenating properties. The pensioners then proceed to behave like teenagers and paint the town red.

Our little band of geriatric renegades contains every clich from the playground. The rebel, the poet, the charmer and even the stubborn one are all present.

Of course, the neighbours turn out to be friendly aliens and the cocoons contain fellow space travellers in hibernation. The sci-fi trappings of the film are merely there to provide a reason for heroes to behave like kids.

Cocoon owes a lot to a segment of Steven Spielberg's film 'The Twilight Zone' called 'Kick the can', where old people become young again, and director Ron Howard, who later went on to direct 'Apollo 13', covers exactly the same ground as Spielberg did.

Howard does play some clever role-reversals on the audience. The youthful looking aliens quickly find themselves in the role of stern parental figures while the elderly stars misbehave.

The film won Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and for Best Supporting Actor, Don Ameche. Though Ameche, who plays a break dancing elder is superb, it's hard to see why it won an award for the special effects, as they aren't that special. In fact Spielberg's Close Encounters does the same kind of thing a lot more effectively.

Overall Cocoon is a nice blast from the past, but nothing special.

July 11, 2002 16:30