The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 10: Flight Of The Navigator (1986)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

When I realised that the next movie in this exercise was this one, did not feel things would go well.

There were three reasons for this:

1) When I decided to do this mad exercise in watching all the films in the Radio Times Film Guide 2013 (bought for £2.50 earlier this year in the Harlow branch of W H Smith) when I return late at night from work, it did not (as it should have done) occur to be that it meant that I would need to watch kids' films as well.

2) This was produced by Walt Disney pictures (amongst others). I can honestly say that of the films I've seen when I was a child aside from the Herbie pictures I've never liked a Walt Disney movie that didn't have at least a bit of animation in them. The non animated films were, to me, a bit naff.

3) When I was unemployed I spent part of my time doing voluntary work stacking up books (of course) and DVDs. And I do remember that this film seemed to be often in the boxes and bags people gave in.

Well now I've seen it I think I can understand why.

A twelve year old boy goes missing in 1978. Eight years later he reappears. Physically unchanged.

As a parent I think to myself how would I feel if my daughter was missing. The agonies I would feel wondering what had happened to her. This is a preface for family entertainment? No matter he returns. No matter he's physically unchanged. A child went missing.

As a child I would have felt frightened about being lost without my family.

And that all tarnished the entire movie for me. No matter it has an alien spacecraft that talk, cute aliens and in another ET rip off the "government" is after him. It did not matter. The idea of a missing child in a Disney movie is something I couldn't stand.

Until the next time.