Kristin and Carole are off this week, so Jeannine is joined by a returning favorite: Tommy, back in the co-host chair for a movie he specifically requested and clearly knows inside and out.

Flight of the Navigator follows 12-year-old David Freeman, who vanishes in the woods in 1978 and wakes up eight years later without having aged a single day. His little brother is now older than he is. His parents have moved on without him. And NASA wants very badly to know exactly where he's been. Then David finds Max, a wildly sarcastic alien spacecraft, and the two of them end up on a journey that's part sci-fi adventure and part heartbreaking meditation on what it means to lose everyone you love to time itself.

They get into the cast too. Long before Sex and the City, a young Sarah Jessica Parker appears in this film, and by her own account, she barely remembers making it. Veronica Cartwright, who plays David's mom, brings a resume that includes Alien and The Birds. And they spend real time on lead actor Joey Cramer's story, since his life after the movie took a much harder turn than anyone watching in 1986 could have guessed.

There's also a great bit of movie trivia: director Randal Kleiser and George Lucas were college roommates, and the special effects company behind the film's groundbreaking CGI spaceship folded not long after the movie came out.

Did Flight of the Navigator age well? Listen and find out.

Thanks for joining us at the Shermer High Alumni Association. If you're enjoying the show, a quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is the biggest thing that helps new listeners find us. Follow along for next week's episode, and share this one with your fellow '80s movie lovers.