Cocoon

Cocoon is good company, provided we can forgive a film for being so determined to cheer us up. Ron Howard makes a science-fiction comedy that gives its older actors room to be funny, awkward and affectionate, and that generosity does most of the work. The fantasy is easy to accept because the people make it worth accepting. Our reservation is the persistence of the reassurance: the director sometimes seems unwilling to leave a feeling alone until he has made it comfortable.

Don Ameche, as Arthur Selwyn, has the lightness the film needs, finding pleasure in attention without turning every moment into an appeal for affection. Wilford Brimley’s Benjamin Luckett supplies a firmer presence, while Hume Cronyn gives Joseph Finley a quickness that keeps the exchanges lively. We were moved more than we expected by the three of them together. Their amusement and impatience with one another suggest friendships that do not need to be explained at length.

Tom Benedek’s screenplay is strongest when it lets that interplay carry the comedy. These characters need not distribute wisdom whenever somebody younger enters, and the actors make good use of that freedom. This matters in a genre often content to make older people kindly witnesses to somebody else’s adventure. Here we want to spend time with them, even when the science-fiction business is asking for our attention.

Donald Peterman’s cinematography makes the fantasy welcoming, although the visual softness can become another way of telling us not to worry. Jack T. Collis’s production design is similarly unthreatening: the science fiction feels close enough to everyday life for these people to belong in it. Both serve the director’s wish to keep the human company more interesting than the strange objects. We would welcome a little more unease, but a harsher look might also work against the actors’ ease.

James Horner’s music is less discreet, and its insistence is the most wearing part of the film. It presses the tenderness when the performances have already made the point, reducing our freedom to feel something less tidy. Daniel P. Hanley and Mike Hill give the ensemble breathing space in the editing, which is welcome. At 117 minutes, though, the film has more time for its sentimental insistence than it needs.

The younger performers have a harder assignment. Steve Guttenberg, as Jack Bonner, and Tahnee Welch, as Kitty, cannot make their parts as involving as the older characters, though the imbalance is not entirely theirs to solve. The director keeps finding his most persuasive material in faces that need little explanation. When attention shifts away from them, we become more aware of how carefully the film is arranging our response.

There is nothing embarrassing about wanting a film to make us feel better. The difficulty here is that reassurance sometimes arrives before a less comfortable feeling has had time to register. Still, the affection between these performers gives the sweetness enough substance to earn an evening. Choose it for the older cast, with a tolerance for being reassured more often than necessary.