I saw a wonderful movie today.
Flight of the Navigator (1986).
I adored this movie so much I have no idea where to begin praising it. It's like the closest I've ever come to watching a perfect live action children's movie where the child is actually the star. Easily on par with all those other 80s children's classics like Goonies and Stand By Me.
This one is science fiction and actually has a very complicated hard sci-fi premise/plot that put's a lot of serious adult sci-fi to shame. The emotional range that gets displayed throughout is astounding, made more-so by the child star's huge range and almost natural delivery. In a film about love and loss it's like magic how the viewer grows to love the lead so that by the end of the movie you're feeling every emotion the child is encountering.
There are no villains and yet the movie is full of dramatic tension as to the future of the boy and whether there will be any kind of happy ending. While the main plot is verging on the tragedy levels of the emotional spectrum, the movie is also jam packed with smart, well delivered and punchy humour that even professional comedians would be proud of.
Normally with these kind of movies it's possible to predict the narrative as it plays out, often in a very cheesy and dragged out format, but here there's nothing that makes you facepalm, nothing that makes you scream "get on with it" and nothing horrendously cliched. It's like a Steven Spielberg movie but without the desperate over-sentimentalisation.
The only genuine negative I could think of would be when Pee-Wee Herman pops up in the form of a Hal-like voice for an alien craft, full of the usual Pee-Wee'isms. For me it wasn't so bad as I've never been over saturated with Pee-Wee to become tired of it, but I could see how that might "ruin it" for some.
Also, if you can't watch movies that star incredibly, unbelievably cute 12 year olds (yes, that's even one of a young Sarah Jessica Parker's lines, telling the young lad how incredibly cute he is), then don't torture yourself, this is entirely the young lad's movie and everyone else revolves around him and his story.
In fact, the kid is so cute and lovable that people still try and hunt him down even to this day. He was as per Elton John's classic song, a candle that burned out long before the legend ever did. He stopped doing movies, rumours of drugs and stupid living, rejects fame and recently had a run-in with the law. But, damn, if you could take a picture of love and frame it for eternity, then the 12 year old Flight of the Navigator is the closest I've seen (which also fits the plot of the movie for those who understand the irony).
9/10 movie for me, only losing a point for the over-the-top Pee-Wee'ing in the latter stages, some actual swear words like shit and bastard (kids' movie!), and some lost-in-time 80s references. I was stunned to see this only has 6.9 on IMDB, but then I remembered how allergic some people are to 12 year old boys in movies. Of the written reviews there's only 2 people who rated it less than a 6, and they mostly bleat on about Disney being assholes blah blah blah.
Edit: almost forgot, interesting trivia, his mum is played by the 'other' female from Alien