Flight of the Navigator

• Directed by Randal Kleiser
• August 1, 1986

When a young boy falls in a ravine in 1978, he wakes up and finds himself in 1986 and at the center of a mystery.

Flight of the Navigator is one of those movies probably better known by science fiction and Disney connoisseurs than by the general movie watching audience which is quite a shame. While not great it is a good family-friendly science-fiction film that focuses as much attention on the science-fiction elements as it does on the characters. It has an intriguing premise that is mostly well done.

David Freeman (Joey Cramer) in the story falls down and finds himself eight years into his future not knowing how he got there or how eight years passed him by without him aging and everyone else becoming older. And much of the story is David reacting to the changes and others to his change.

Joey Cramer as David is okay. He certainly will not surprise you with his skill, but he is good enough that you will not think negatively of the performance. On a side note I really thought this was Henry Thomas from ET. Never mind that both films were separated by five years and that Thomas would be unable to play David just because of age.

Obviously you need a little more in the story than somebody pulling a Rip van Winkle. Enter the “Trimaxion Drone Ship” or just “Max” (voice of Paul Reubens) which goes about and studies alien life in the galaxy for its creators on a far-off planet. This movie gets its name because the boy essentially becomes the navigator (and Max calls him that) for the ship because the ship prior to crashing into some powerlines downloaded its navigational knowledge into the boy’s human brain. There it uses the erroneous “science” of the human brain only using 10% of its capacity so the computer downloaded its knowledge into the remaining percentage.

How slow or controlled was this crash? This has been a sticking point for me for decades. The process of downloading is never given any explanation contrary to just about everything else in the film. I am assuming a crash would require a level of attention and occur with a level of suddenness that would make extreme planning ahead difficult. And there would be a serious level of planning to assume you might hit some power lines. Does the ship have some knowledge of the future?

It stretches some scientific fact in order to make the narrative’s science work and does a good job of explaining most of the science and presenting a plausible scenario. Beyond boogering up the download bit, they make a wise decision of not going too deep and creating fistfuls of technobabble that could accidentally open a can of worms.

You could be forgiven for not realizing that this is indeed Pee-Wee Herman voicing Max as he initially turns in a very different character. Initially. There’s a touch of arrogance in Max but once it downloads the navigational information from David back into its systems Max becomes Pee-wee Herman. Reubens does a fine job but the problem is they made the ship Pee-Wee Herman which I know was popular and all that. It detracted from the story as you keep thinking you were watching Pee-Wee Herman. Way too jarring for the story.

David has a sweet crush (ignore watching her through a telescope) on a girl in his school. It’s a little unclear in the film if Carolyn McAdams (Sarah Jessica Parker) whom he meets at the military base is the same girl that he had a crush on eight years prior. It is not but they do a very poor job of making that bit clear. If you are distracted for a brief moment you will not get it.

I think it would’ve certainly been a worthwhile plot element even if it stretched the limits of credibility. What a coincidence that the girl he had a crush on eight years before now is taking care of him while he’s at the military base! Otherwise the reveal of the crush is an extraneous plot element. If there was a need for the father and son to bond in the story (dad ignores the whole telescope thing) then it could have been accomplished by ways that were less questionable even then.

The government isn’t portrayed as necessarily bad in Flight of the Navigator. Our villain of Dr. Faraday (Howard Hesseman)-if you can call him a villain-is obsessed not because he’s some sinister government agent but because the discovery of his or any lifetime and something that could write his name in the history books and change the world has landed in his lap. Howard Hesseman does a fine job here in the part. He doesn’t make the guy evil or just plain mean. He’s just doing his job and probably getting wrapped up in the impact of what he has found rather than the human cost of his actions.

There is just a sense of fun and enjoyment in the movie. It doesn’t get dark or sinister. You get a very good feel of what David and Max are going through. This is their story and they keep a tone that’s reflective of just that.

I think the narrative itself moves a little too quickly. This is only 90 minutes, and those 90 minutes move quite swiftly. Some of the characters and some of the elements don’t get developed as well as they could have been. Another 10 or 15 minutes to flesh out the boy’s relationships with his family members or Faraday as a character would’ve been much more preferable.

This film has very early CGI coupled with some heavy practical effects to round this out. That is a benefit to the story as they were unable to overwhelm you with computer generated visuals unlike today. You are not watching what amounts to a CGI cartoon. The CGI and practical effects blend very well together and because of the extremely limited use of the CGI due to the primitive nature of the technology your brain doesn’t automatically say ‘This is fake’ because there’s so much of it. You are drawn in and it tells the story rather than impresses you with the cool stuff they can do.

While Flight of the Navigator does move a bit quickly it’s still a very enjoyable family-friendly bit of science-fiction that doesn’t quite get the love word acknowledgement that it deserves. It’s a good effort on the part of Disney that stands apart from other science-fiction films and is certainly worth checking out!