Flight of the NavigatorWhat's shiny, floats in the air, travels faster than the speed of light, and looks like a Nerf football? It's not a riddle; it's a Trimaxion Drone Ship--"Max" for short, voiced by Paul Reubens--from the planet Phaelon, and it is one of the two great mysteries that has the folks at NASA, circa 1986, scratching their heads. The other mystery is the sudden reappearance of a boy named David Freeman (Joey Cramer), who has been missing for eight years, and hasn't appeared to have aged a day. Coincidentally, the two share a connection, necessitating that they work together to their mutual benefit.
|
|
Flight of the Navigator was produced by Walt Disney Studios, and it wears that pedigree well. It is a science fiction movie about time travel, aliens, and even Matrix-like psychic communication with machines, but is geared for young audiences, with only rare instances of offensive language, and lots of colorful characters, comedy, and drama which can be appreciated by children. When I was a child, I watched this film repeatedly, so I was eager to see how it held up after many years away, in a way mirroring David's own future shock. The beginning of Flight of the Navigator is set during a halcyon Fourth of July celebration in 1978, in the city of Fort Lauderdale, where David's family--his father, Bill (Cliff DeYoung), mother, Helen (Veronica Cartwright), and annoying younger brother, Jeff (Albie Whitaker)--attend a frisbee-throwing competition for dogs, and plan to go out on the boat with fireworks. It is simple and innocent; David's only real problem is his crush on a girl his age. But when David goes to retrieve his brother--crossing through a patch of woods to do so--he slips and falls into a ravine, only to wake up later, return home, and find his whole world turned upside-down. Flight of the Navigator cleverly avoids giving us any indication that there has been a transition in time, because David doesn't know he has been away for eight years. So when David returns to his home to find a different family living within it, his confusion is ours. As David's jarring experience unfolds, an unidentified flying object has crashed into some power lines elsewhere, prompting lead NASA researcher, Dr. Louis Faraday (Howard Hesseman), to concoct a cover story and bring the floating craft in for study. These two stories might be completely unrelated, until a point when David is undergoing some tests at the hospital in an attempt to jump-start his memory, only to result in a subconscious communication being sent to the computers, literally drawing a picture of the mysterious vessel. In short time, Faraday approaches David and his family to invite the boy to be studied at their own facility, which is a ruse by Faraday to provoke some kind of response from David via his inevitable proximity to the craft. David gets wise to his imprisonment, having only an intern named Carolyn McAdams (Sarah Jessica Parker) to talk to; but eventually, a voice David hears helps arrange for him to escape. And Faraday gets more than he bargained for when he watches David get into the ship, and take off twenty miles straight up and into outer space.
The first half of Flight of the Navigator plays a bit like a mystery or thriller, as the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, although visual cues early on frequently allude to the subconscious perception of flying saucers. The second half of the film is an adventure, where David must learn to communicate with the living ship, and discovers the reason that the ship has been trying to contact him. The ship--its persona represented by a crane-like appendage with a colorful robot eye--comes across as an unfeeling, overly literal robot, who orders David to give him the star charts uploaded into his brain when he was being researched on the planet Phaelon, some 560 light years away. Coincidentally, as a result of the collision with the electrical towers, Max has forgotten the coordinates necessary to complete his mission, and "recruits" David to be his navigator, hence the title. In order for Max to obtain the knowledge locked away in David's head--hinted at after he had been previously connected with the computers at the hospital and NASA--Max performs a "mind transfer" on the boy. And while this endows Max with David's artificially-enhanced knowledge, it also bestows Max with the bizarre personality of an adolescent boy. Max starts speaking in strange voices and making equally strange jokes; and there is no small similarity between the robot and his voice actor's most prominent role, Pee-Wee Herman, complete with his "geeky" laugh. Max reveals to David that he was responsible for abducting him eight years ago for study; although it was his intention to return him to his appropriate time, as Max indicates, it is very risky to transport a fragile human body backwards in time. David hasn't aged, because, as Dr. Faraday points out, time slows as one approaches the speed of light, a useful bit of knowledge that kids watching the movie would benefit from knowing. Max and David bond as they soar through the skies, buzzing by teenagers in a convertible, a gator shop in the Everglades, and even Tokyo, to the tunes of the Beach Boys. Aside from being stranded in time, David's experience with Max would be a kid's dream come true, getting to pilot a spaceship, and even adopt a cute little alien as a pet, a bat-like creature with a taste for Crunch bars called a "puckmaren". Watching Flight of the Navigator reminded me why I watched this movie over and over as a kid. It is an altogether innocent tale--albeit one where somehow NASA, of all government organizations, is cast as the bad guy--with real drama and excitement that a child of David's age can relate to, and not feel condescended to or unimportant. There is a dash of astrophysics and also important messages about family and trust, too. And as a film in which the hero is displaced in time, it is also an ironic pleasure as a movie chock full of Eighties nostalgia.
Recommended for: Fans of a light-hearted science fiction adventure with time travel and aliens that children can enjoy and relate to, as well as even learn a little about space in a fun way. And while that might sound boring for adults, it's a charming story that parents today should be able to appreciate, perhaps having grown up in these times themselves.
The first half of Flight of the Navigator plays a bit like a mystery or thriller, as the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place, although visual cues early on frequently allude to the subconscious perception of flying saucers. The second half of the film is an adventure, where David must learn to communicate with the living ship, and discovers the reason that the ship has been trying to contact him. The ship--its persona represented by a crane-like appendage with a colorful robot eye--comes across as an unfeeling, overly literal robot, who orders David to give him the star charts uploaded into his brain when he was being researched on the planet Phaelon, some 560 light years away. Coincidentally, as a result of the collision with the electrical towers, Max has forgotten the coordinates necessary to complete his mission, and "recruits" David to be his navigator, hence the title. In order for Max to obtain the knowledge locked away in David's head--hinted at after he had been previously connected with the computers at the hospital and NASA--Max performs a "mind transfer" on the boy. And while this endows Max with David's artificially-enhanced knowledge, it also bestows Max with the bizarre personality of an adolescent boy. Max starts speaking in strange voices and making equally strange jokes; and there is no small similarity between the robot and his voice actor's most prominent role, Pee-Wee Herman, complete with his "geeky" laugh. Max reveals to David that he was responsible for abducting him eight years ago for study; although it was his intention to return him to his appropriate time, as Max indicates, it is very risky to transport a fragile human body backwards in time. David hasn't aged, because, as Dr. Faraday points out, time slows as one approaches the speed of light, a useful bit of knowledge that kids watching the movie would benefit from knowing. Max and David bond as they soar through the skies, buzzing by teenagers in a convertible, a gator shop in the Everglades, and even Tokyo, to the tunes of the Beach Boys. Aside from being stranded in time, David's experience with Max would be a kid's dream come true, getting to pilot a spaceship, and even adopt a cute little alien as a pet, a bat-like creature with a taste for Crunch bars called a "puckmaren". Watching Flight of the Navigator reminded me why I watched this movie over and over as a kid. It is an altogether innocent tale--albeit one where somehow NASA, of all government organizations, is cast as the bad guy--with real drama and excitement that a child of David's age can relate to, and not feel condescended to or unimportant. There is a dash of astrophysics and also important messages about family and trust, too. And as a film in which the hero is displaced in time, it is also an ironic pleasure as a movie chock full of Eighties nostalgia.
Recommended for: Fans of a light-hearted science fiction adventure with time travel and aliens that children can enjoy and relate to, as well as even learn a little about space in a fun way. And while that might sound boring for adults, it's a charming story that parents today should be able to appreciate, perhaps having grown up in these times themselves.