Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

SPOILER ALERT! - I was mesmerized by the acting of the two young boys who maintained such innocence and vulnerability throughout the movie. Some scenes were hard to watch, especially when the boys both got stomach aches and ran home to find their wonderful dog dead, or we're led to believe he's dead for a few seconds, but he's actually wounded and bleeding at the hands of the abusive stepfather. After being puzzled by the ending where the younger brother, Bobby, flies away in a home made flying machine, I had to go back and rethink the movie. Conclusion - I think the boys did build a flying machine. A flying machine that in reality was not capable of flying having been built by school age boys in 7 days. I think Bobby died going down the hill in his flying machine right after he said "I'm going down". It was Mikey's imagination that gave the Flyer the ability to soar and take Bobby off to safety. I think inside both boys knew that he was going to die but it was his only escape from the abuse he was suffering, since Mom didn't have what it took to protect her sons. The older brother Mikey had to believe that somehow Bobby made it and was still alive out there somewhere. But in reality a boy Bobby's age,if he had flown away, wouldn't have made it through a week without being discovered by someone who would have alerted authorities. I don't think Bobby was a figment of Mikey's imagination. My conclusion is based on the following: Bobby made the statement a few times in the movie "that it won't be long now" and you got the feeling that somehow he was going to be free from the abuse or that he knew he was going to die. And there was the scene at the gas station when they were filling the flyer up with gas and the gas station attendant was a young guy with a limp who had also tried to "fly" and his injuries which caused the limp had made the newspapers. To me that was an indication that realistically things were not going to go well. The really sad part is that in the end, Mikey is still trying to protect his weak mother when she still can't face what is really happening. Mikey sends her postcards that he wrote to look like they were from Bobby. Postcards that arrived after Bobby's death to assure her that everything was alright. Extremely BRAVE boys played superbly! Horrible mother! Wonderful dog! GREAT story told with sensitivity! Outstanding directing! The ambiguous ending drives home the point that there is no nice, tidy, happy ending in an abusive situation. The damage caused by domestic violence is deep and lasts a lifetime, destroying the ability to truly trust anyone.

Back in the dark days of 1990, the hoped-for Heir to the Spielberg Throne (after the failure of supposed whiz-kid Phil Joanou) was mistakenly believed to be pretentious Spielberg wannabe David Mickey Evans. Evans managed to fleece the studios for over a million dollars, suckering baby-boomer executives into believing his screenplay -- a combination of nostalgic, 1960s references and a disturbing drama about child abuse -- somehow equaled good storytelling, and a decent film. As Rod Stewart once sang, "look how wrong you can be."But the novice's artsy-fartsy, "E.T."-inspired script convinced enough people he was the next Chosen One -- the New Spielberg -- and so a deal was struck to not only buy the script for more money than 99 percent of the world's population will ever see in their lifetime, but for Evans to direct the film as well -- even though he'd had never directed anything in his life. Hey, how hard can it be to be another film-making genius, after all?Two weeks into the shoot, Columbia found out. His dailies were called "totally unusable" by the studio -- or at least those level-headed enough to not to have fallen under the E.N.C. (Emperor's New Clothes) spell. All his footage was scrapped and recycled into guitar pics.So what's a studio to do after sinking 10 or 20 million dollars into something they still believed represented the Resurrection of Steven Spielberg? Hire Spielberg himself to save the day? Columbia probably tried that.Enter old pro Richard Donner. Hey, he may not be a cinematic genius, but he gets the job done. "Superman" wasn't too bad, after all -- and the first "Lethal Weapon" was pretty good.So Donner steps in and grabs the directorial reins. Fortunately he manages to convince Columbia that the worst of the film's insipid fantasy sequences -- which would have played out like a ten year-old's acid trip -- have to go. Unfortunately, he leaves in the Crying Buffalo (ooh, how poetic) and the ridiculous, pseudo-Spielberg fantasy ending, complete with Clueless Mom perfectly content for the rest of her life to get postcards from her missing son as he circles the globe in his red wagon. Right.But Donner did manage to get a decent performance out of Elijah Wood. And Lorraine Bracco as the Idiot Mom wasn't bad either. Maybe Donner should be reevaluated. Maybe he's not such a phony Hollywood hack as everyone has always believed.The only reason I'm giving this over-baked misfire a 2 rating is that someone was smart enough to cast the great John Heard (but in the wrong part, of course). The kids do okay... though Tom Hanks' horrible, overly-explanatory narration nearly destroys every scene it intrudes upon.One might think that after the David Mickey Evanses and Phil Joanous and Troy Duffys of the world, the studios might finally wise up. One might hope that these hype-driven film-making debacles might prevent the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome from ever rearing its ugly head again.Doubtful!

My take on the ending. Bobby died at the hands of his step father. Mike had tried as he may to get Bobby out. Only a child could think that it would be possible to build a machine that could fly. Bobby died.... Mike as a child survived by creating an alternative ending in his mind...on how Bobby left....Mike made a plane that flew Bobby out. Children who are sexually and violent abused often create whole other worlds in their minds to survive.Was also great seeing my old housing area. We called it San Jose Boulevard and I lived right around where these house were filmed. It was so strange to see that they filmed inside the houses...not studios... It was my kitchen, bedroom and living room. And those hills...we use to hike them as kids....looking down on our little valley....seeing glimpses of the bay. Was a real nostalgia trip for me.

This movie was horrible. If it had never been made the world would be a better place. Come on, a flying wagon? What were they thinking? This was a sub-par movie with a horrible hook, and I would like a written apology from the studio that produced this, along with some cookies to help repay me for the time I wasted on this crap fest that I can never get back. If you payed to see this movie, I am truly sorry because I watched it on TV on a Sunday afternoon when I had nothing better to do and it pretty much ruined my whole week. A flying freaking WAGON?!?! And that's supposed to make up for having a horrible mother who cares more about her own screwed up needs than her children? No wonder they don't have enough sense to tell someone he is beating them, their mother teaches them nothing but that what she wants comes before everything else. Absolutely horrible.