FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR

title: FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR

year: 1986

cast: Joey Cramer, Cliff DeYoung

director: Randall Kleiser

rating: **

You'd think a movie about a boy who flies around in a giant silver bean dip bowl would be completely awful, but it's only partially awful. The first fifty minutes is quite good actually. A boy is wandering in the woods, he falls down a ravine, and when he wakes up, it's eight years later. His parents are older, and his little brother is his big brother. He ends up being taken to a NASA outpost where they do tests on his brain. He has the intellect of a brilliant alien. They give him a room and then he gets "called" to, that's right, the giant silver bean dip bowl - actually a space ship - that the government is keeping in a hanger. He escapes from his room riding in a robotic butler, goes to the hanger, and climbs aboard the ship. At this point the good half of the film has run its course. Inside the vessel is a metallic... something-or-rather, kind of a steering wheel with a personality, which begins speaking to him... and get this... it's Pee Wee Herman's voice. Imagine Mel Blanc providing the voice of "Hall 9000" and you'll get the concept.