Saturday, June 6, 2009

notafilmcritic: "Cocoon" [B+]

Rewatched this last night as part of my research for a new screenplay (no, of something original). It was just as good as I thought I remembered, even though I had forgotten huge chunks of the story. I was impressed by the amount of story the writer and director got out of just the people and the effect the 'magic' was having on them without resorting to too many visual effects.

In fact, it seemed like the movie bogged down and got a little silly when the emphasis was on showing the aliens and their spacecraft. That could have been edited down even more. I mean, what was the deal with Kitty's 'soul' bouncing off the rafters before it finally shot into Jack? Foreplay? I didn't get it. I don't think they did justice to that couple.

That may also be a good demonstration of a rule of thumb I was just reading about how many main characters a film can support, which is no more than 4 to 6. In this film, you had the 2 main aliens, Jack the boat skipper, the 3 main geezers, their 3 wives/girlfriends, another geezer couple, and a grandson. That's about 11 people that figured into the plot in some way. Plus there were assorted other aliens, geezers and geezerettes, and the old folks home staff. Too many people for the way the story was structured, I think. This resulted in several throw-away scenes and dead-ends.

But it's still a good film and very recommended.

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