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Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Posted By: Efgrapha
Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986)
DVD5 | ISO | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:29:29 | 3.52 Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English HoH, French, Spanish
Genre: Fantasy Adventure, Family-Oriented Adventure

The year is 1978: 12-year-old David Freeman (Joey Cramer), playing in the woods near his home, is knocked unconscious. He awakens and heads home, only to find strangers living there. He also finds that the year is 1986, and that he's been officially missing for eight years. NASA officials determine that David was abducted by aliens during his blackout, and hope to scan the boy's brain in order to unlock a few secrets of the universe. Answering the call of a strange, unseen force, David boards a well-hidden spaceship and takes off, guided by the jocular voice of a computer named MAX (voiced by none other than Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman). Realizing that he can't fit in to 1986 so long as he's a child of the '70s, David hopes to retrace the steps of his alien abductors and get back to his own time.

Synopsis by Hal Erickson, Allmovie.com

"Flight of the Navigator" is perhaps the finest live action children`s film to appear under the Disney banner since Uncle Walt`s departure from the scene 20 years ago. It is not, strictly speaking, a Walt Disney picture, because the film was produced by a financing entity known as Producers Sales Organization, and then acquired by Walt Disney Pictures for theatrical release.

Which is not to say that "Flight of the Navigator" isn`t worthy of wearing the Walt Disney logo. The director, Randal Kleiser, clearly has taken the time to study old Disney pictures and tease out the secret of their appeal.

When Disney was running the operation himself, he was able to instill his films with an almost mystically accurate sense of the very real anxieties of childhood.

"Flight of the Navigator," for example, is a study in sibling rivalry, like the classic "Lady and the Tramp." The 12-year-old hero, David (Joey Cramer) lives in Ft. Lauderdale with his loving parents (Veronica Cartwright and Cliff De Young); the only real blemish on his existence is an 8-year-old brother, Jeff (Albie Whitaker), who won`t stop bugging him.

David is walking through a dark and tangled wood (the imagery is almost Shakesperean here), full of blank despair ("I don`t know what I want out of life anymore") when pesky Jeff pops out of a bush to frighten him. Startled, David slips into a ravine. By the time he scrambles out and returns home, something mighty strange has happened. There`s another family living in his house; his parents have given him up for dead and moved away; and worst of all, his hated younger brother is now 16 (and a different actor–Matt Adler). Eight years have passed since David fell, though he hasn`t aged a day.

This providential change hasn`t been effected by the traditional Disney fairy dust, but by its 1986 equivalent: a flying saucer. David, it seems, had been spirited away to a distant galaxy, and the screenplay needs only to evoke some Einsteinian mumbo-jumbo to explain why he hasn`t grown up: As you approach the speed of light, passage of time seems normal to you but to other objects in the time span, it passes very quickly.

The important thing, though, is that his relationship with Jeff has been reversed. He can now see his younger/older brother as a human being, and when David is abducted (again) by a sinister scientist (Howard Hesseman) intent on prying all of the intergalactic secrets out of his brain, Jeff is instrumental in helping him return home.

Also on hand in the research center that becomes David`s prison is a sympathetic young nurse (Sarah Jessica Perkar), who teaches him, in her spare moments, that it isn`t impossible for a 12-year-old boy to talk to girls.

The time-shift plot may be a bit too complicated for a children`s film, and the sheer amount of talk necessary to explain it may cause some restlessness. But when the film shifts into the action mode in its second half –the flying saucer returns to aid in David`s rescue–it becomes quite bright and lively.

The saucer is piloted by a mechanical being named Max (voiced by one Paul Mall, who sounds suspiciously like Pee Wee Herman) who starts out stuffy but soon (after swapping some brain waves with David) reverts to the happy state of a feisty American kid, quoting TV commercials and swapping affectionate insults ("You geek!").

"Flight of the Navigator" has an amiable low-tech feel. The saucer looks from the outside like a giant Jell-O mold, and it`s gleaming chrome interior seems to have been carpentered from the grillwork of a few dozen 1959 Pontiacs.

But while the film may not have the visual polish of a Steven Spielberg production, it does have a depth of performance that Spielberg often lacks. Director Kleiser has become a sensitive handler of actors in the years since he made his debut with "Grease," and such scenes as David`s reunion with his inexplicably aged parents have an emotional authenticity that is rare in any genre, much less in an adventure movie made for little ones.

Review by Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune

IMDB 6,9/10 from 28 415 users
Wiki

Director: Randal Kleiser

Writers: Mark H. Baker (story), Michael Burton, Matt MacManus

Cast: Joey Cramer, Paul Reubens, Veronica Cartwright, Sarah Jessica Parker and other

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]

Flight of the Navigator (1986) [Re-Up]


Special Features:

None

All thanks to original releaser