Category: Action / Adventure - Children - Children's Video - Family - Feature Film Family
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DVD Flight of the Navigator
Disney's 1986 Flight of the Navigator combines a strong ensemble cast and classic '80s soundtrack with dazzling special effects for a high-flying sci-fi adventure. While searching for his little brother in the woods, 12-year-old David Freeman (Joey Cramer) falls down a ravine and is knocked unconscious. After what seems like minutes, he returns home, only to discover that eight years have passed since he was declared missing and presumed dead. Even more mystifying is that David hasn't aged, nor can he account for the time lapse. Meanwhile, NASA officials stumble upon a futuristic spacecraft and are determined to assess what David knows about it by locking him in a top-secret lab for scanning and testing. His only chance of escape is in the spacecraft manned by Max, a wisecracking robot. Cramer gives an earnest performance, which overcomes an imperfect script, while enough one-liners and imaginative animation will keep families engaged. Watch for Sarah Jessica Parker in one of her first film appearances. Rated PG for language. (Ages 6 and older) --Lynn Gibson
The flight of the Navigator; we begin our journey on the Fourth of July, 1978 with a Frisbee Dog Contest. Our hero is your run-of-the-mill 12-year-old boy named David Freeman (Joey Cramer). He is there with his family. He's got a mother, a father, a pesky younger brother, and an unspectacular dog named Bruiser.
That evening, our older brother hero, goes into the woods to find his younger brother so that the family can begin their Independence Day celebrations. Wandering in the woods, he looses his balance and falls into a ravine. He gets up, brushes himself off after what appears to be just minutes. But it hasn't been just minutes; it is actually eight years later. David hasn't changed in any way, but the rest of the world has.
Now it's 1986. An older couple now lives in his house, his younger brother is now his older brother, and his favorite TV show, "Starsky and Hutch" is off the air! David doesn't know what's happened or where he's been. It's a mystery that fascinated specialists are more than willing to try to unravel.
One of these fascinated specialists is Dr. Faraday (Howard Hesseman), who makes it clear to David and his family that NASA and it's top-of-the-line resources are their only shot at figuring out what has happened. David agrees to spend 48 hours at a NASA base, so that he can be tested by NASA's best people in a search for answers.
At the same time Dr. Faraday and the NASA specialists are troubled by an apparently unrelated discovery of what appears to be a spaceship. This additional discovery causes Dr. Faraday to decide that David will need to stay longer than promised to finish his tests.
David, unhappy with the delays decides to escape, and with the help of Carolyn McAdams (Sarah Jessica Parker), a friendly young intern at the base, he is successful. His getaway quickly takes him to Dr. Faraday's problem spaceship, and on his own he begins to make sense of the some of the strange things, dreams and voices, he has been experiencing.
The spaceship is commanded by a robotic intelligence (voiced by Paul Reubens), who David names Max. Max needs help from David, specifically the contents of his brain. David wants answers from Max and to escape from the curious scientists. Their needs come together and they take off together on a unique and thrilling journey through space and time.
Flight of the Navigator is brilliant. All of its elements seem to work like a well oiled machine. The extremely clever premise is played to perfection, thanks to skillful crafting and flawless casting.. The film has an intriguing premise, and sets a fast and flawless pace that it never departs from.
In the lead role, Joey Cramer has just the right amount of curiosity and charisma to make the protagonist fully likable. Supporting performances from the family members all seem to hit the right notes. The robotic character, Max, is a lot of fun. Once he acquires some personality from a mind-mining procedure, he begins to sound quite a bit like the very best of Pee Wee Herman.
The films script and direction deserve highest possible praise. These and a great sense of humor helps to distinguish Flight of the Navigator from other strong science fiction films of the late '70s and early '80s. While its time-travel tale is a serious one, it deftly uses comedy to enhance the adventure and to crank up the entertainment value. In many of the best ways, the film calls to mind the perfect blend of Back to the Future, without feeling the least bit derivative.
This movie truely filled my imagination
I searched high and low for this movie for a very long time. i saw this movie when i was about 9 years old and i am 29 now. i couldn't remember the name of it until about 2002. i was searching online and really making up names for it until it came on television. and ever since then i had to have it. this movie back then really had my imagination going about the future. but overall i have to have this movie in my movie collection. i love it.
Childhood classic
I first watched this movie as a kid in the 80's, and practically wore the old vhs copy out back then. It was great to find it on dvd and relive the memories all over again. This movie has a little bit of something for everyone. Also of note is the pioneering CG special effects used in this film.. (the environment mapping on the spaceship). Groundbreaking for the time...
It's only in retrospect that one can see that Joe Dante's Explorers is an awful lot like Robert Zemeckis's Contact. An alien race, determined to make contact with earthlings, feeds some unsuspecting individuals the blueprints for space travel. Instead of the big gyroscope that Jodie Foster was strapped into in Contact, the three kids in Explorers make their intergalactic trip in crystalline blue Flubber. River Phoenix looks shockingly prepubescent (which he was) as Wolfgang, the brains of the trio, while Ethan Hawke looks like a young lady-killer as Ben. Fitting into the "whatever happened to?" category is Jason Presson as Darren, an outcast who joins the two eggheads. Joe Dante's career, cruising after Gremlins was a smash, faced a serious "hitch in... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ethan Hawke - River Phoenix Director(s): Joe Dante DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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John Badham's family-oriented adventure comedy, though obviously hatched in the wake of E.T. and Star Wars, manages to create its own identity through a sweet tone and an affectionate sense of fun. Military robot Number 5, a well-armed killing machine, is zapped by lightning during a test and emerges with a consciousness, curiosity, a wacky sense of humor, and a new peace-loving philosophy. Ally Sheedy (who debuted in Badham's hit WarGames) is the animal lover whose home is sanctuary for a zoo-full of strays and who adopts the adolescent robot. Steve Guttenberg is the goofy but reclusive robotics designer who goes off in search of his creation to save him from the gun-happy army. The mix of gentle slapstick and innocent romance makes for a harmless family comedy. It... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ally Sheedy - Steve Guttenberg Director(s): John Badham DVD Release Date: Released the 23 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Quite possibly the nadir of Steven Spielberg's career as a producer, this piece of sentimental junk from 1987 concerns five little spacecraft which arrive on Earth just in time to help out some New Yorkers getting kicked out of a tenement. The script's goo just sticks to the viewer, and the cast looks silly by trying not to be silly. You get the feeling that Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment was pretty much throwing stuff at the wall to see what would hang there, and they came up with this ridiculous thing. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Hume Cronyn - Jessica Tandy Director(s): Matthew Robbins DVD Release Date: Released the 16 March 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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At the time of its original release in 1984, this modestly budgeted sci-fi excursion had the distinction of offering some of the first examples of purely computer-generated animation, an apt (and frugal) special-effects solution for a movie with a plot line rooted in computer games. Both the computer-generated visuals and the arcade game now look quaint, but writer-director Nick Castle's affable, good- hearted adventure holds up nicely, thanks to a clever premise--the title game is actually a test for prospective starship pilots, planted by embattled aliens under siege from an evil invader. When a restless teenager (Lance Guest) racks up an impressive score, he finds himself spirited away to the besieged planet and thrust into the midst of an intergalactic war. Apart from Castle's skill... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Nick Castle DVD Release Date: Released the 08 June 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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SpaceCamp shares a striking similarity to Ron Howard's Apollo 13--it's about NASA trying to bring some people down from outer space, except in this case 13 represents the median age of those in danger. Kate Capshaw plays Andie, who throws off the curve by being on the high end of that age scale. She's always a bridesmaid, but never a bride in the shuttle program, an astronaut doomed to play wet nurse to a gaggle of kids enrolled in NASA's summer program. Of course, out of all these teeming hordes of children (there don't appear to be any particular qualifying standards to attend the camp), the film focuses on five. Kathryn (Lea Thompson) is a hopeful pilot who wants to be at the controls of the shuttle one day. Tate Donovan plays Kevin, a daft young carouser who... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kate Capshaw - Lea Thompson Director(s): Harry Winer DVD Release Date: Released the 02 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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