Flight of the Navigator

PLOT:

David Scott Freeman (Joey Cramer) is an average, twelve-year-old American boy living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1978, who owns a young dog name Bruiser whom he tries to teach Frisbee tricks. On the night of July 4, his parents (Veronica Cartwright and Cliff DeYoung) ask him to go retrieve his younger brother Jeff (Albie Whitaker) from a friend’s house, which is located on the other side of the woods that are behind his house. While in the woods, David falls down an embankment into a ravine and is knocked unconscious. He awakes after what seems like a few moments. He returns home, only to find that he is now in the year 1986 and that everything has changed but himself. His childhood home has been sold to a married couple, who believe David is a missing child and report him to the local police. The police do not understand why David, who has been declared legally dead afterbeing missing for so long, still looks the same as when he was last sighted. They are further puzzled when David claims that Jimmy Carter is still President. The police take David to a house where he is reunited with his family, now aged 8 years.

Meanwhile, an extraterrestrial spacecraft has crashed into some power lines. NASA agents convince the police that the craft is theirs and take it to their base, intending to study it. The NASA workers find the ship seamless and impenetrable.

David is taken to the hospital to try to determine where he has been for the last eight years, and to discover the reason for which he has not aged. The scientists have begun performing tests on his brain and find it to contain accurate information pertinent to the alien spacecraft that is at the NASA base; further scans reveal that his brain contains alien data and star charts leading to the planet of Phaelon, which is such a great distance away NASA had not charted it. This planet is described as being exactly 560 light-years away from Earth. The travel time used by the spacecraft to reach it is 2.2 solar hours, implying a speed of approximately 2.25 million times the speed of light. The concept of time dilation is therefore used to explain the fact that David has not aged and is unaware of more than a few hours’ passage.

David befriends an intern named Carolyn McAdams (Sarah Jessica Parker), telling her to let his parents know that the institute plans to keep him longer than promised. David hears the ship calling to him telepathically. He escapes the room by hiding in a service robot. Ignored by security, this robot takes David to the hangar where the ship is stored. As if made of liquid metal, an opening and stairway appear on the underside of the hovering spacecraft, and David climbs inside. Once inside the ship, he meets its robotic pilot, whom he subsequently nicknames Max (voiced by Paul Reubens). Referring to David as “Navigator”, Max accepts David’s command to escape the base and take him somewhere to think.

The ship takes off from the NASA facility and hides on the ocean floor of the Gulf of Mexico. To travel more quickly, Max causes the spaceship to morph into a streamlined, point-nosed form designed to penetrate thicker atmosphere than that of Phaelon. The craft shows the abilities to hover, to accelerate at high G, to travel at tremendous speeds (up to Mach 10, or ten times the speed of sound), to become transparent, to travel underwater, and to move in virtually any direction without any discernable engine or power source.

Max informs David that his mission was to traverse the galaxy, collect biological specimens, and take them back to his home planet of Phaelonfor analysis before returning them to the place and time from which they were taken. Max’s sensors had discovered that humans only use 10% of their brain and as an experiment, David’s brain was filled with information. During this procedure, David’s brain inexplicably “leaked”. Max then returned David to Earth, but did not take him back to his proper time, fearing that humans were too delicate to survive time travel. When trying to leave Earth and return to Phaelon, Max accidentally crashed the ship into a power line, erasing all the star charts and data necessary for returning home from the ship’s computer. Max needs the information placed in David’s brain to complete his mission and return to Phaelon.

Max performs a painless scan of David’s brain to extract the information. Max’s personality and voice immediately change, becoming less robotic and more human and erratic (similar to Reubens’ Pee-wee Herman persona), which Max says is a result of having extracted information irrelevant to his mission from David’s brain.

David and Max bicker as to their next course of action, to which Max’s response is to shut down and allow the ship to fall from its orbit, taunting David as to his inability to fly the ship. About to crash, David finds the button that activates the manual controls for the ship and takes control. They travel the Earth trying to decide what to do next, tracked and chased by NASA all the way, from Tokyo, Japan, San Francisco, California, Texas, and finally to Pensacola, Florida, which is some 525 air miles away from David’s home.

To find the way to David’s family, David asks the use of a gas station’s telephone. This is much to the stupefication of the attendant “Big Al”, who is shocked to see a “flying saucer” appear on his ground and to have its passenger make such a mundane request. A family stopping for gas is also amazed by the flying saucer believing it to be a tourist trap and their kids pose for pictures by it. David calls his brother Jeff asking him to find a way send a signal so that he can find his family’s new house. The family is equally shocked as David climbs up the seemingly unsupported stairs which then close up sealing the ship. As they fly away, Al utters the phrase “He just said he wanted to phone home” referencing E.T..

Jeff successfully signals the flying saucer where their new home is by lighting David’s old bottle rockets and other fireworks. David is initially thrilled that he will soon return home, but becomes despondent upon realizing that he has lost 8 years of his life. Upon returning to his home and seeing the NASA people waiting for him, David decides that he doesn’t belong in 1986 and cannot stay, believing that the NASA scientists will treat him like a guinea pig for the rest of his life.

David bids his family goodbye and tells Max that he must return to his own time. David knows that there is a risk of being vaporized, but insists that Max take him back. Afterthe return to July 4, 1978, he makes his way home, and finds everything the way he left it before he was abducted. He is happy to be reunited with his parents and forgives his brother for scaring him in the forest earlier. He discovers that he has retained one memento from his experience; the Puckmaren, a peaceful extraterrestrial specimen collected by Max whose entire race has been destroyed by a comet’s collision withhis native planet. The film ends with Max flying back to Phaelon as the fireworks are being lit to celebrate the 4th of July, while he sends a message to David “See you later, Navigator!”

REVIEW:

When I think of movies in the 80s, this is one of the first to pop in my head. I can’t tell you how many times I saw it in theaters, or how many times I rewound the tape ti watch it over and over again. Now I have it on DVD an the story is still the same. No love has been lost, that’s for sure.

The best part of this film all involve the spaceship. As a young boy, I wanted one to come take me away for a few days, as a matter of fact I still want that. This thing is everything the government doesn’t want alien spaceships to be. It’s fast, impregnable, can disappear from radar in the blink of an eye, etc. That may be one of the reasons I like it so. anything that can frustrate the government like that is ok in my book. On top of all this, the effects were done with stop-motion, which as I’ve made known in numerous blog entries, is my SFX of choice.

The acting in this film is obviously not what its known for. As a matter of fact, only Sarah Jessica Parker went on to bigger and better things. To be fair, the adults all had decent careers, but the kids…well, if I’m not mistaken, they all left the business shortly after this film.

The relationship between David and Max develops quick and they seem to work as one cohesive unit, similar to E.T. and Elliott, but without the nearly dying part. Paul Rubens voice as Max really makes the ship more of a “human”character. That was the intent, I know, but I think at some point he should have reverted back to his normal state, probably during the trip across time when he had to concentrate.

Aside from the acting being far below where it should be, even for the 80s, I don’t have any complains about this film. It’s fun, funny, and entertaining. *GASP* An entertaining film, not THAT’S a concept. Such a shame that they recently announced this was about to be bastardized..er…I mean remade. I’ve made my stance on remakes very clear. I dislike them as a general rule, but reserve final judgementuntil I see them for myself. Hopefully this won’t get past the writing process. Some people just don’t get that you don’t mess with perfection, I guess.

5 out of 5 stars

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