People are voting emotionally.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Well. This is the first movie review that I am not reviewing the movie so much as I am reviewing the movie reviewers. Or more or less reviewing people. I am reading several movie reviews of this movie Explorers and astounded. Very crappy and basically stupid people. Unlike the movie reviewer who says, "I like this better than E.T." Unlike the movie reviewer who says that this was good about halfway through. I am going to say that this movie was created as a test to see how stupid people are. Basically this movie to me proves why people are morons. Seriously.This movie is not comparable to E.T. So I say shut up to that person. This movie really started to get good about five sixths of the way into it. And then before you know it the movie is over. Actually near the end it started to remind me of HitchHiker's guide to the Galaxy. Or George Noory who has constantly said on his show coast to coast that he wonders if there aren't a lot of malevolent aliens out there. And if the Universe is just one big eating contest. Of a big bad fish getting eaten by a bigger badder fish, and a bigger badder fish and so on. So the person who said this movie was good about the first half and then turned into crap. That person is a moron. People are morons. The movie exposes that.The cool puppeteering is like four sixths to five sixths into the movie. And then there are some comical singing of aliens and mesmerized looks of the child actors, notably Ethan Hawke, has the face that I have now as an adult when watching this. Like, What the heck is going on? All of this is in the second half of the movie. However maybe the moron reviewer meant that this movie fails to make an appropriate or congealing connection between the first half of the movie and the second half of the movie. That is so. There is a poorly executed connection between the boys making the spaceship at the beginning to them actually going into outer space near the end. I find this kind of a flaw in a lot of Joe Dante Movies. His movies tend to look way different in the end than in the beginning. Almost like in every Joe Dante movie, including gremlins you are watching two different movies and a poorly executed mechanism of connecting the two. I just usually assume whenever I see Mr. Fudderman (Dick Miller, in all) that he is the indicator that the movie is about to change into something else. Usually something very bizarre and macabre.Well don't go by the morons movie reviews. Spielberg is no way mentioned or involved with this project, so don't even mention him. Just watch the movie. And know that there is a good 100 percent chance that you are more intelligence than 99.9 percent of all of the movie reviewers who have seen this. Oh yeah, this movie could have been way better, in my opinion if they stuck with the creepy alien route and added more song and dance numbers. And basically STARTED at the five sixths of the way into it. Michael Reed you are dumb as a stoned panda or jerboa. Anyway I am glad that the movie didn't start when it actually started to get good and go on the same narrative because it could have been a hundred times scarier than the Howling. Really show Joe Dante's Dark ethos.Atreyu (unimaginative screen name) the aliens don't ruin this. The aliens are where the movie could have been good. Crawl under a rock and ask the pill bugs to feed you more poor words. You favorite word is the word right? Eh cough Nancy Pelosi. You didn't see that the aliens were a parody on Nancy Pelosi and the do nothings in congress. Joe Dante has wit you people don't.

It's really pretty fun at first, chugging along with 80's charm, and then… BIZARRO WORLD. What. the. heck. The last half hour goes completely off the rails. I guess there was studio trouble, but they still designed what they designed at the end there. It hurt to watch. It especially hurt to listen to it - it was like they told Robin William's not-as-funny cousin to just yell things for 20 minutes, then didn't edit ANY of it out, then added a bunch of TV screens flashing static and super-saturated, washed-out clips of explosions or people yelling or other chaotic things. I kept going and finished it just to be able to say I did, but it actually made my stomach hurt. It was harder to watch than a lot of horror movies I've seen. It was like watching Transformers, except with nasty puppets instead of at-least-it-looks-sorta-cool CGI. It was a little difficult to think a clear thought afterward. I felt like I was going insane.

I'm a big fan of Joe Dante's oeuvre, although I'm more disposed towards his adult audience films (like PIRANHA and THE HOWLING) over his out-and-out kid's flicks. Saying that, EXPLORERS is still a decent kid's movie that manages to successfully capture that magical feel of danger and exploration of the best genre films. In many ways it's similar in feel to THE GOONIES, made on a lower budget perhaps but without the cloying sentimentality that Spielberg brought to GOONIES.There's plenty to like in EXPLORERS, not least the spirit of inventiveness and invention that allows the kids to build their own spaceship using trash and one of the most dated computers you'll see on screen (128k of memory? Wow!). Dante did well to cast Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix in the main roles, as both show off the talent that would make them successful later on in their careers. Plus there's a decent-sized cameo from Dick Miller and James Cromwell cast against type as a mad inventor.Although I never watched this film all the way through as a kid, I remember being put off by what I saw of the rubbery aliens. Even now they disappoint, although I understand that they're included as a sort of satire of American TV and culture, but they take the film towards GREMLINS territory rather than a kid's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Sadly, it's the budget deficit that prevents EXPLORERS from being a true genre classic, but you can still rely on Dante to deliver an entertaining movie for the most part.

I remember seeing a tape of this movie once when I was a kid, although even back then I seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what the movie did right and what it did wrong. This is a movie that starts out with great potential, but unfortunately it suffers from a bit of an identity crisis in the third act that stops the movie from being the classic that it could have been.The first two acts of the movie are great. We are introduced to a strong cast of child actors who all deliver great performances-- no doubt due to the direction by Joe Dante, who directed the Gremlins (which, unsurprisingly, was executive produced by Steven Spielberg). If you are familiar movies like Close Encounters, E.T., or the more recent Super 8, and even The Goonies, this movie will immediately have a familiar sense of charm. The story of some innocently mischievous kids getting into a bit of trouble so that they can build their own spaceship is something just about any kid can identify with, and the way the movie approaches the ends up being strangely plausible. The kids are memorable characters, and seeing the journey that takes them from happening upon a crazy, mysterious idea to flying their own spacecraft is one that will capture the imagination of both the young and old.Unfortunately, the destination is not nearly as satisfying as the journey. When the kids get into space and finally make first contact, the thoughtful "Spielbergian" wonder disappears quickly, and is replaced with an obnoxious Saturday morning cartoon. The aliens themselves look like leftovers from a Ren and Stimpy cartoon, and they are about as tactfully written. The rest of the movie did such an admirable job of taken itself seriously that when our protagonists come face to face with pop-culture spouting Nickelodeon rejects, the movie falls apart.I will always remember this movie as a mixed bag, and a missed opportunity. You get 2/3 of a great movie, and the last 1/3 of a crappy one. The first two acts of the movie definitely at least make it worth checking out, but the fact that the movie started off so strong only to rapidly devolve into cartoonish antics keeps it from being a must-see. I almost wish I had just stopped the tape when the kids made it into space, and left the mystery of the aliens as just that so I could enjoy the rest of the movie for what it was.