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Still, the first half and the cast more then make up for it.Looking to watch ' Explorers' in the comfort of your own home? Tracking down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Joe Dante-directed movie via subscription can be challenging, so we here at Moviefone want to do the heavy lifting. The aliens were lame and overall the whole space sequence was just dull. In this one, that missing ingredient is the space sequence. I didn't expect anything to spectacular as I've noticed that most of Dante's films are missing a key ingredient that would make them more than just slightly above average. Phoenix shows of his prodigy skills with a phenomenal performance, and the movie is worth a look if only for Phoenix himself.Įxplorers is one to watch when you want a movie that reminds you of being a kid. It's an interesting movie by all means, especially with young actors that would go onto do bigger and better things like Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix. The second half is where they actually try to go into space, and this doesn't quite work as well as it needed to.
The first half is mostly the kids figuring out how to make this thing work, and it's extremely well done. After a test run where they take it out for a spin around town, they decide to work out the bugs and go looking for whatever it is that is relaying these ideas to them. They soon find out that the things from his dream works and that they have created a spaceship. Three friends come together to try to create a spaceship after one of the boys has a crazy dream.
The first half of the movie is great though. Most of the problems come in the second part of the movie. The movie has its problems, but nonetheless it was a nice little watch. "The adventure begins in your own back yard."Įxplorers is a pretty good little sci-fi children's movie, and like most Joe Dante films it has a feeling of nostalgia all over it. So I recommend watching this movie until the boys make it clear that they're going to visit the aliens. With that said, everything else leading to that third act is quite good and entertaining. There will, obviously, be some people that'll enjoy this third act more than I did, but the movie just lost a lot with the third act honestly. But, and I've already outlined my issues with the film, so I won't get into that again, but those flaws, at least they were to me, dragged the movie down tremendously. So the issues I have with the film have absolutely nothing to do with the cast, the cast is great. I mean he was still good, but Ethan and River, unsurprisingly, stole the show. Jason Presson is also good, but he didn't really do much of note after this film, his most high profile role after this would've been Gremlins 2. The acting is real good, particularly considering that both River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke would've been in their mid-teens by this point in time and they were already really good. Like I mentioned, everything leading to the meeting was good and entertaining. Not like Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro in Midnight Run where they insulted the shit out of each other, but they were pretty much in each other's cases for the majority of the film, so I thought that was pretty fun. I think the chemistry between the leads is actually quite good and, surprisingly, antagonistic. I just think there's a certain charm about it that carries a lot of it, it's also a pretty entertaining film. With that said, I was enjoying the film prior to the boys meeting the aliens. You don't want something in your film to detract from everything that came prior to it, but that's exactly what this movie does.
It actually detracted from the film instead of adding to it and, of course, you want the opposite to be the case. In all, as the climax to the film, it just didn't do anything for me at all and it actually brought the movie down a lot, to me. The comedy is also not very good in this segment. It's like, supposedly, meant to be this life-changing experience for these three boys, but it just doesn't feel like it. It just felt way too forced and contrived to be effective. Perhaps that's a little strong, but considering that the film pretty much spent all its time building up to the moment when they make contact with an alien species, the execution of it definitely left a lot to be desired, at least in my view. And then they went to the alien spaceship and it all fell apart.
I was actually enjoying this movie for the most part.