【Esther Studer】

With Disney+'s launch earlier this month and Esther Studerthe upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, there's never been a better time to binge old favorites. This week, we're looking back at Disney hits and catching up on movies we missed the first time. Join us for a walk down memory lane. 

Add Flight of the Navigator to your Disney+ watch list. Go on, do it. You won't be disappointed.

I'll admit, I was worried going in. Flight of the Navigator, released in 1986, is one of those movies I remember seeing as a small child. It's a movie I loved a lot way back when, and the title has stuck with me ever since even as memories of the story and characters have faded with time.

One quick warning: It's hard to give you the rundown of this story without getting into spoilers, mostly because of the way the movie is paced. Spoiler culture is just different now than it used to be, but if you really don't want to know anything then you'll just have to trust me when I say "go watch."

There's your spoiler warning.

Flight of the Navigatoris a space fantasy about a young boy and his alien robot friend. David Freeman (Joey Cramer) is a 12-year-old kid from Florida who falls down a hill in the woods one evening in 1972 and gets knocked out. When David wakes up, it's suddenly eight years later even though he himself is still 12.

Right around the time David wakes up, NASA discovers a crashed flying saucer and ferries it to a secure facility for further research. It soon becomes clear that David is somehow connected to the ship and its lone occupant, an alien artificial intelligence named Max (voiced by Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens).

Flight of the Navigatorwas one of the many boy-meets-alien movies to surface in the years after E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. This one charts a unique path, however. On one hand, it's a script-flip of E.T.'s basic premise, with the alien here trying to help the young boy get back home. But the story also forces us to consider what "home" really means for a kid who fell off the face of the Earth and didn't age at all as eight years passed.

Max is the character kids remember, but Flight of the Navigatorisn't really aboutthe alien robot. We don't even meet Max until we're halfway through the 90-minute runtime. This is David's story, and none of the fun flying saucer stuff works without setting up why it's important in the first place.

I imagine that I was probably bored as a kid, sitting through those first 45 minutes before Pee Wee Herman pops up in the guise of an unblinking robot eye that looks like a Star Wars outtake. But watching it again, my adult self was riveted. Flight of the Navigatorspends a lot of time dwelling on the impact of David being separated from his family, then reunited after eight years. And it's a stronger story as a result.

The human drama on the ground stays interesting thanks to a few contributions. Cramer himself captures the right range of emotion to make for a believable performance. His family – Cliff DeYoung, Veronica Cartwright, and Matt Adler as dad, mom, and little brother, respectively – also help to sell it.

The story also works because NASA, the movie's most antagonistic presence, is never really cast as a villain. Dr. Louis Faraday (Howard Hesseman), who leads the team looking into the flying saucer and David's connection to it, is a scientist first. He wants answers, but not in a way that would explicitly cause harm to anyone who might have those answers.

That Flight of the Navigatorkeeps up a sense of narrative tension without an overt villain is one of its great strengths. This is as wholesome as Disney movies get, favoring a low-stakes push-and-pull between David/Max and NASA against the high-stakes concern over how David will ever get his life back,

The whole back half of the movie is also a testament to the value of practical effects. Flight of the Navigatormakes very light use of computer animation for some of the elements involving the ship. But Max and the various other alien creatures we come across are physical puppets.

Also, the ship's gleaming chrome interior looks exactly how I remember it. It's as dazzling now as it was back then, with its transforming floors and wall. A modern remake would no doubt lean heavily on CG for the ship interior, but the practical design of the original remains convincing.

One final detail that's worth pointing out: A very young Sarah Jessica Parker appears in this movie. I wish she had more to do, but seeing her cast as a rebellious young adult raised on '80s glam rock is a welcome surprise.

That's it, that's my case. Flight of the Navigatoris classic from the Disney Vault that manages to hold up. Add it to your Disney+ playlist with confidence.