Flight of the Navigator
Short description
Twelve-year-old David Freeman is knocked unconscious in the woods near his home one night in 1978. When he comes to and returns to his house, strangers are living there, and he learns that eight years have passed while he has not aged at all. His parents are relieved to have him back but cannot explain his unchanged appearance or where he has been. A NASA scientist investigating a crashed spacecraft nearby finds that David shares a puzzling connection with the vessel, and the boy becomes central to efforts to understand it.
Randal Kleiser directed the film, which followed Grease, The Blue Lagoon and Summer Lovers in his filmography. Michael Burton and Matt MacManus wrote the screenplay, and Dimitri Villard, Robert Wald and David Joseph produced. Joey Cramer plays David, with Veronica Cartwright and Cliff DeYoung as his parents, Sarah Jessica Parker as Carolyn McAdams, Matt Adler as the older Jeff, and Paul Reubens providing the voice of Max. The production cost about 9 million dollars and took in roughly 19 million worldwide.
Audience response has been favourable over the years: on IMDb the film holds 6.9/10 from around 55,000 votes, and on TMDB it rates 7/10 from just under a thousand votes. A critics' rating of 6.6/10 from 33 reviews places professional assessments slightly below the audience scores. The film runs 90 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The fictional homeworld of Max Faelon is located 560 light-years from Earth. However, the entire journey there takes just over two hours.
- After David leaves, the gas station attendant tells the tourists present that "He just wanted to phone home." This is a clear reference to Steven Spielberg's *E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial* (1982), whose protagonist also wanted to "phone home."
- The film was one of the first projects to utilize computer special effects. They were created by Omnibus Graphics, one of the earliest computer animation studios, which also participated in creating most of the classic 3D animated commercials of the 80s.
- In his room at NASA headquarters, David asks when the *Starsky & Hutch* series will be on television. Director Randall Kleiser also directed episodes of this series.
- When David's parents drive up to the house at the beginning of the film, the radio in their car plays the song “You're The One That I Want” from *Grease* (1978), which was also directed by Randall Kleiser.
- The music video, a clip of which David watches on television in his room at the NASA base, is “Lose Your Love” by the then-popular band Blancmange.
- When Max describes the various fictional creatures on the ship, he says, “This is a Phenastar from Pixar Elliptic.” Five years after the film's release, Pixar Studios, then a small group of computer special effects and animation specialists, signed its first contract with Disney Studios, which made *Flight of the Navigator*.
- Two full-scale spaceship hulls were constructed for the film's shooting: one with an open entrance and the other without. They were built from thin, curved sheets of wood stretched over a metal frame and painted with special reflective paint. Both models have been preserved and are periodically exhibited at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Orlando.
- The ship's computer, Max, speaks Bulgarian. When David enters the ship and sits in the pilot's seat, Max says: “Attention. Oblagni se. Chui me.” — which translates as “Attention. Lean back. Listen to me.”
- In the original trailer for the film, Max was voiced by an actor other than Paul Reubens, as in the film. Paul Reubens later voiced the main character in the popular Disney attraction-simulator "Star Tours", which opened in 1987 and was based on the "Star Wars" universe of George Lucas.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
