Wolff rating: NOT BAD
Plot summary: Boy gets kidnapped by aliens and returns at the same age only 12 years later.
Biased, pithy comments: ``E.T.'' was (and still is, by some measures) the largest money-making film of all time, and the reasons for its success are not entirely understood. Partially, it was a cute (and not very alien) alien, partially it was Spielberg's intuitive directing that captured the desire of every angst-ridden 12-year-old to have a secret to gain independence, and partially the happening John Williams score. (Hey! I hear you cry. This is supposed to be a review of ``Navigator!'' I know, I know, I'm getting there.) There were a few (actually, surprisingly few) knock-offs of Spielberg's hit, and this film is one of them, and they try to gather all the parts mentioned above (although the score this time is, as is standard in 1986, groovy electronic sounds instead of a soaring orchestra). It's not a great film by any means, but it isn't a bad one, but it's so obviously derivative of ``E.T.'' that it's impossible to separate it from its parent idea. However, just because you have all the parts of ``E.T'' doesn't mean you have something as good. Seen alone over a decade later, this is a cute movie following a well-worn fantasy---kid gains a modicum of freedom from a repressive situation, but after sampling the fear of being alone on a dangerous adventure, he strives to return to the bosom of the American nuclear family group, now appreciating the warmth and thankful for it. With Disney family movie stand-ins for the perfect parents, Hesseman (`WKRP in Cincinatti') being the far-too-powerful scientist in charge of the extensive NASA security arm (huh? They have *no* budget for that sort of thing), a young and attractive Sarah Jessica Parker just off a role in ``Footloose'', and Cramer pulling off the little kid on an adventure with passible acting and bad hair (but hey, it was the 70s viewed through an 80s lens), I had fun but felt somehow used---this was a film borrowing from so many other films it had no real identity on its own, with the possible exception of some delightful scenes between Cramer and Paul ``Pee Wee Herman'' Reubens crusing through the clouds grooving to the music. It was there that the film hit a real emotion.
Other Notes: The computer's voice is credited as Paul Mall, but it's really Reubens. The director, Kleiser, references himself as director of ``Starsky And Hutch'' when the kid asks why it still isn't on. Kleiser, who had already directed ``Grease'' will go on to work with Reubens in his vastly successful ``Pee Wee's Big Adventure.''
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Joey Cramer, Paul Reubens, Veronica Cartwright, Cliff De Young, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matt Adler, Howard Hesseman.
Directed by: Randal Kleiser