Flight of the Navigator

I had seen this movie on VHS back in the 80's and I now have children and just watched this movie with them on DVD. The film still has presence and the special effects are still quite good even considering they are now near 20 years old. Very impressive and my children are now complete fans of the movie.

If you have never seen this film, I would recommend it whole-heartedly for the entire family. If it has been sometime since you watched this film I would say check it out, well worth a return visit.

One thing I have to mention is the joy I was receiving just watching my children (ages 4 through 8) experience this movie for the first time. Even after all of the Hi-tech movies they have seen in recent years this movie was still able to capture their attention, hold it and entertain just as well as anything in recent memory (such as Spiderman, Hulk or even Spy Kids).

My children wanted to re-watch it immediately after it ended, it was that good in their (short attention span) minds.

5 out of 5 stars from me and mine.

**Although regarding the DVD transfer, it could have used some extra's, even a trailer from the original film, however there were none, simple menu access and set-up options only, enjoyable none-the-less.

For the fist time I saw Flight of The Navigator when I was a kid, nearly twenty years ago. I remember young soviet kids flocked into the theaters to see a strange American movie and somehow taped it but too many time has passed and all these years it was like a rather unclear distant memory for me, a distant memory of something pretty good and even beautiful. Since then I was unable to find it and watch it again and only recently I caught in on a cable TV channel. Despite being twenty seven years old now I still liked it a lot.

Flight of The Navigator is a very good Sci-fi family movie despite (or some people could say thanks to) it is not as overloaded by the special effects as most of such modern movies. That left enough place not only for pure entertainment bit also for emotions and some pretty nice scenes with rather good dialogs. It the story of an eleven years old boy, who after a strange and quite inexplicable contact with something looked like an alien ship got moved through the time into future several years ago, which passed for him like a couple of hours. In this future he takes an adventure to find an explanation what really happened with him. Flight of The Navigator is a very enjoyable movie for whole family, which deserves much more appreciation than overwhelming majority of recent family movies.

9 out of 10

In 1978, in Fort Lauderdale, the twelve years old David Freeman (Joey Cramer) goes through the grove to bring his younger brother back home. He slides, falls in a hole and faints. When he wakes up and goes home, eight years have passed and he has not aged. Meanwhile, NASA scientists find a spacecraft near to a fallen electric tower. David is brought to NASA to be studied and soon he realizes that he can communicate with the UFO. He finds out that he was sent to a distant planet in a very high speed and became the navigator of the spacecraft. In his life, he had lost 4.4 hours. On Earth, eight years have passed. This movie is a delightful entertainment, using good special effects and having a very reasonable story. It is a family entertainment, indicated for all ages. Sarah Jessica Parker, famous presently due to the show `From Sex and the City', has a minor participation as a trainee in NASA. My vote is seven.

This movie is an entertaining fantasy, but there's quite a bit more to it just beneath the surface. The protagonist is a 12-y/o kid raised, as most are in Western culture, to be incompetent, overly dependent on adults, and untrusting of his own judgment. When he finds himself aboard an alien spacecraft, he naturally first attempts to transfer that dependency to the robotic pilot Max, which, all-seeing eye and all, represents the omniscient grown-up. As time goes on, though, David begins to realize that: 1) his own interests do not in fact always coincide with Max's, 2)that therefore he must advocate for himself to achieve a favorable outcome, and 3) that he's the one who has to decide just what outcome will best meet his needs. Much unlike most "kid movies," this character shows real growth, and in the end confronts a real moral and personal dilemma. Whether you agree with his choice or not, you have to respect him for what he has become.

Flight of the Navigator is one of those terrific adventure films for kids, even after all these years. It also falls into a long line of fun 80s sci-fi/adventure family movies.

Davey (Joey Cramer) goes into the woods looking for his little brother one evening in 1978. When he wakes up after a brief period of unconsciousness, he turns into a scientific marvel. Nothing is as Davey remembers it, but he can't figure out why because he only fell asleep for a brief period.

Davey is told that his parents reported the young boy missing in 1978, the evening that he went searching in the woods for his younger brother, referring to the incident in the past tense because it is 1985. Only Davey is still exactly the same age and everything he was from 1978, while time has passed for everyone else. His little brother is now his big brother (Matt Adler). His parents are old. Everyone is confused and the scientific world find the situation fascinating.

The scientists turn Davey into their personal guinea pig, running tests and probing him and all that junk. And soon they discover, that Davey was abducted. Davey, understandably a confused little kid, can't figure out what's going on and he sure doesn't want to be locked up in some lab where people prod at him all day long and tell him very little. So, he breaks lose, and hops aboard the spaceship that took him through time before. While it is an escape from the scientists and their security (briefly), it also holds the answers to what happened to him. It is also an opportunity for Davey to learn everything from this spaceship. And a kid's movie isn't complete without personifying inanimate objects. The spaceship is essentially controlled by Max, which is like it's CPU, a CPU with a cool sense of humor who likewise tries to learn about human emotions and condition from his passenger, Davey.

Filmed around Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, it is still a cool movie for kids...teenagers...whatever, having a little bit of something for everyone. Great humor, cool special effects, and the like.