COCOON

STARRING: Don Ameche, Wilford Bramley, Hume Cronyn, Brian Dennehy, Jack Gillford, Steve Guttenberg, Tahnee Welch

1985, 117 Minutes, Directed by: Ron Howard

Description: A group of aliens travel to a Florida retirement community to rescue some long-stranded colleagues cocooned and buried beneath the sea. But as the aliens take on human form and stash their counterparts in a swimming pool, a group of elderly retirees discover the pool and after swimming in the water find themselves rejuvenated, with boundless energy and insatiable appetites. Soon the retirees are forced to choose between living out their lives on earth with their families, or leaving with the aliens and attaining immortality. — Amazon.com

Ron Howard (the sweet kid from Happy Days) does Close Encounters from behind the director's chair. Happy Days meet E.T.? Not really.

Although much of Cocoon's iconography (the UFOs, the aliens) has been stolen from Spielberg, this is one of those movies that leaves one with a warm glowing feeling after leaving the cinema - and it wasn't the poor air-conditioning...

And who cannot be warmed by a tale of a bunch of loveable geriatrics who grow younger because of their proximity to alien pods stored nearby and who are finally taken away by those same aliens?

This movie is also commendable for featuring probably the only sex scene between an alien and an earthling (Steve Guttenberg of Police Academy fame) - even though the alien is Raquel Welch's daughter and is every bit as sexy . . .

By the way, this movie made enough money to warrant a sequel in which the geriatrics returns to earth on some lame pretext - not the point of the exercise really.

Watch Trailer / Clip: