Joey Cramer, aged 12, in Flight of the Navigator
Credit: Alamy
In May 2016, headlines surfaced online that rightly shocked film fans of a certain age – former child actor Joey Cramer, star of Flight of the Navigator, had been charged with bank robbery in Canada. Seeing the headlines – accompanied by a gaunt mug shot – it was easy to write off Cramer, then 42 years old, as just another child star gone off the rails and onto the scrapheap.
I was guilty of having that exact thought, and hovered over the story for a second longer than usual. For me, like millions of Eighties kids, Flight of the Navigator still packs an imagination-zinging punch. Released in 1986 – in the wake of ET, Back to the Future, and The Goonies – the Disney-produced film has that uniquely Eighties, Spielberg-esque spirit: a kids’ fantasy adventure through time and space, with an all-American family at its heart.