80s Movie Review: Flight of the Navigator

Written by:
Mark H. Baker writer
Michael Burton writer
Matt MacManus writer

A young boy chases his dog into the woods, falls in a ravine. He loses consciousness for a few seconds. When we comes to and runs back to his home, he finds that his parents are not there. He is 8 years in the future. He is still 12, but his family and the world are 8 year in the future (1986). How did he get 8 years into the future? And can he return?

This is one of my favorite movies of the 80’s. It plays on the fantasies of a 12 year old boy having control of a highly advanced space craft. The boy is Joey Cramer. Cramer played in a few other 80s movies. Flight of the Navigator has a group of very familiar faces: Cliff De Young, Veronica Cartwright, Howard Hesse, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Paul Rueben actually did a voice over in the film. One thing I noticed is that of the 40 or so credited actors only about 6 have still active and doing movies and TV regularly, so only 15%. I wonder if this means there is only about a 15% chance of the serious actors making it.

Aside from the story, Alan Silvestri’s music to Flight of the Navigator is my favorite thing about the movie. Looking through is extensive body of work, I can see hes done a lot of my favorite movie music: Polar Express, Forest Gump, The Bodyguard, Back to the Future II, Predator, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Abyss and many others (he’s done over 100 movies).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006293/

Some of Alan Silvestri’s Music:

Popularity: 7% [?]