Flight of the Navigator (1986) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by matt lynch ★★★ 2

  This doesn't make a lick of sense, the kid is charitably speaking a total charisma-free brat, and the horrible psychic trauma this whole thing would have inflicted on this entire family is tantalizingly shrugged off. Loaded with incredible practical VFX. 7-year-old me wanted nothing more than to live this movie. There's even a part where he gets to go live at NASA and they give him his own room, a waitress with a robot, a TV, and a bunch of toys. He seems not that into it!

• Review by belial_carboni ★★★★ 17

  A true childhood staple of mine. I somehow never owned this over the years so I treated myself to the blu ray. I remember watching this countless times on TV in my youth. I think it used to play on the Sunday night Disney programming way back when. Pure 80s nostalgia and a perfect Sunday afternoon flick.

  This viewing held up pretty well. I'm always taken back to how much the plot messed me up as a youngin. The idea of coming home and finding different people living in your home was horrifying. And then finding out your family is 8 years older but you are the same little twerp?? Fuhgetta bout it!

  This movie is mad cheesy but it's…

• Review by Austin Burke ★★★½ 3

  👍🏻70%
  Podcast Review (a fun one) - ClickHERE

  In 1978, a boy travels 8 years into the future and has an adventure with an intelligent, wisecracking alien ship.

  In this classic adventure, a young boy goes through a sequence of wild events to discover that there is so much more beyond the world that he knows. I could easily see this being one that intrigued yet frightened young kids in the 80’s. In the vein of E.T. (just four years prior), a young boy is caught in the midst of this Government project surrounding alien activity. He mysteriously travels to the future and sees older versions of everyone that he loves, and this had to feel like a revolutionary thought…

• Review by Dave Taylor ★★★★★ 5

  ‘This is stupid!
  This is so so stupid!
  I love it!’

  - My son
  Age 7

  🥳🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🥳

• Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 5

  Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.9

  I was rewatching this this afternoon because someone mentioned it somewhere in a thread here on Letterboxd. It was naptime here in my house and with everyone asleep I somehow found myself lured to this film.

  Halfway through I already knew my love for this film hadn't died one bit. It is a fast paced, fun and really well made boy's adventure. I was transported to those days when I watched this a lot when I was a kid with the greatest of ease. This film still seemed to fit me like a favourite pair of shoes, well worn but unbelievably comfortable.

  And then my four year old daughter came downstairs as she…

• Review by Justin Peterson ★★★★

  Well that was a fun boy and his pet spaceship-styled ... wild ride ... of a sci-fi family adventure!

  "See ya later, Navigator!"

  Young David Freeman thought he had just gotten knocked out in a ravine for a few hours ... until he discovers himself transported 8 years in the future with strange coding locked in his mind, and a sleek spaceship in search of a Navigator. I had always heard of this movie growing up, and it finally took the movie sitting right in front of me on Disney+ to finally check it out. And let's just say my son who always falls asleep at night watching movies, was glued to the screen for David's whole cosmic journey.

  "All…

• Review by David James 🍩 ★★★ 9

  You have no idea how hard it is for me to not just slap five stars on this for sheer nostalgia alone. The look of the cool spaceship, the time travel dilemma of the young protagonist with my name, the weird assortment of goopy aliens, the genuine sense of heart, and that future-blast synth score by Alan Silvestri - it all hit me so hard on my first viewing in thirty years. I lived and breathed this movie, along with a handful of other eighties scifi adventures for kids, and then I let it go as I moved on to R rated hot nonsense and grew up.

  But it was fantastic to revisit with my six year old son and…

• Review by Draymoney ★★★½

  "You are the navigator!"

  I loved this movie as a kid. I'm happy to report as a grown ass man, it still hits. I think even as a child something struck me with the darker undertones of the film. A child disappearing for 8 years is a lot. There is something uniquely sad about the first half of the film. I also appreciate how this film is paced. Most kid's films would be in a rush to get to the spaceship sequences. This takes it's time and develops a nice little story.

  This had amazing special effects when it was first released and it still holds up today. Oh and it has some pretty amazing puppets. With a fun score, only a moderately obnoxious child actor, and the great Paul Reubens, Flight of the Navigator is nostalgia that holds up.

• Review by DC Merryweather ★★★★ 1

  At first glance it looks like just another lazy post-E.T. childrens' films of the 1980s, but Flight of the Navigator has an intriguing premise that pushes it close to being a sci-fi mind-bender for kids: A boy who goes missing after searching for his kid brother in some dark woods, returns to his parents eight years later - except he hasn't aged a day.
  This being a fun, live-action Disney movie, the horror of this mystery is kept in the background, but is clearly registered on the faces of the boy's parents. Their joy is mixed with shock and bewilderment, and a tearful David (Joey Cramer) - the boy from 1978 who woke up in 1986 - is palpably shaken…

• Review by Eric Szyszka ★★★★ 5

  A creepy classic. Rewatched this in 2020 somewhere after not seeing it for like 25 years, caught it again today. Terrifying.

• Review by Jesse ★★★½ 3

  Compliance.

  What a great high concept idea straight out of something like The Twilight Zone. What if you woke up and everything has aged many years except you? I don’t think the film explores the time gap as much as they can because it becomes a journey around the world with our alien ship. But nevertheless it’s a fun coming of age film done the Disney way.

  Hey Disneyland, I think you missed an opportunity by not having a Flight of the Navigator ride. But it’s never too late….

• Review by Daryl ★★★★

  Watched endlessly as a kid and have so much personal nostalgia for Flight of the Navigator. Joey Kramer’s performance as David isn’t that great, I have to say, however, the setup is cool, and the visuals hold up pretty well. A really fun, entertaining sci-fi family film, that has some heart, and a film I do have a soft spot for.