Customer Reviews

Final Approach

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Final Approach" (also known as "Junior Pilot") is a typically bland kid's movie about a daydreaming ten year old who uncovers an antiquities smuggling ring, solves a kidnapping, lands a 777 full of passengers, and saves his school's arts program from budget cuts all in one day.

After the credits we learn that precocious Ricky (Jordan Garrett,) son of unemployed airplane mechanic Larry Miller, lives in a land of never-ending fantasies. He's the boy who cried wolf who got Microsoft Flight Simulator for Christmas, and he's taught himself to fly. I bet you can't guess where this is going. After a maudlin scene where we learn that his school's arts program is being axed for budgetary reasons (football coach Eric Roberts is concerned the sports budget might even feel a pinch; oh the pathos) ten students get on a plane for a field trip in Washington, DC. Pretty much every airplane movie stereotype is here, and lead Flight Attendant Stickler (character actor Steve Hytner) is off to a cranky start. Also onboard is a desperately ill person on a gurney with a doctor and nurse in tow and karate expert Kato. I was extremely amused to see Kato, who is played by "Iron Chef America" Chairman Mark Dacascos, acting alongside his son, Makoa. Dacascos is actually quite a good actor and outshines everyone else in the film by orders of magnitude.

Ricky thinks Kato has a gun, and much of the movie is spent trying to stop him from hijacking the plane with tactics employing food fights and extreme hot sauce interspersed with vignettes of things like Ricky and Kato in a martial arts fight to the death using a floor mop. You get the idea. The kids go into the cargo hold (I don't even need to point out that's impossible, right?) and build a luggage fort, then free a Doberman from his kennel and discover an antique Incan mask that's connected to a kidnapping being stolen by a nefarious criminal. They call 911, but that goes nowhere, so they take matters into their own hands and reveal that the medical patient under sedation is actually Ann Dorchester (Rosemary Morgan,) the kidnapping victim. Gunplay erupts, Larry Miller accidentally tranquilizes the female First Officer (Julia Nickson-Soul,) who has come out of the cockpit to negotiate with the hijackers, and Kato reveals himself to be a Federal Air Marshal! It's all very exciting!

A Flight Attendant tries to enter the cockpit but the electronic keypad has shorted out, so Captain Bonehead...sorry...Captain Noonan (Tim Thomerson) leaves his seat with nobody flying the plane to go fiddle with the door at the exact same time they enter terrible weather. He gets knocked out by the turbulence, and the door is jammed! And shorted out! Who will they call? It turns out that Walter (Larry Miller) is an expert on the electrical systems in cockpit doors and he, Kato, and a cast of thousands try to open it with no success. Ricky and feisty pals crawl through the floor, wiggle through a tube to the cockpit and fly the airplane to safety! There are even subplots about a self-indulgent, self-important Senator on a collision course with them in his private jet (that's the most realistic part of the movie of course,) and F-16s preparing to shoot the 777 down (and the wacky officers at the Pentagon who control them.) There's even a very brief subplot about pygmies in Africa and their possible use by US intelligence forces! (I'm not kidding.)

When the plane lands everyone deplanes and everything is just peachy: the pilots come off in wheelchairs, the Doberman comes off on a gurney (?), and the kidnapping is over as rich Mr. Dorchester (Art Cohan) is reunited with his daughter. He offers a huge reward to whoever saved his daughter, and after much debate the winner is (of course) Ricky, who does what any poor ten year old boy would do: he tells Mr. Dorchester to use the money to fund the arts program at his school, because other kids playing the clarinet incompetently means that much to him. It's a great social statement, and of course completely unnecessary, gratuitous, and unrealistic. But then again so is a ten year old flying a 777.

The DVD comes with a lot of extras including a filmmaker commentary track featuring Jordan Garrett, which is geared more towards kids. They would actually find it pretty interesting on balance, but adults not so much. The disc also features an extremely long "Behind the Scenes" feature (see the mop fight choreography!) and trailers.

This is obviously a fantasy movie geared to kids, and as such it succeeds. It's extremely contrived, but the kids do what they are supposed to do and are much less inept and annoying than their adult counterparts (Dacascos excluded.) If you think your pre-teen would like a movie with airplanes, it can be picked up for next to nothing, so feel free to give it a try, though don't raise your expectations too high or try to impose adult standards on it. On the bright side, it is definitely not the worst airplane calamity movie Eric Roberts has ever been in (that would be "Rough Air,") so you've got that going for you!

This is a very enjoyable movie. You need to take it for what it is - made for kids on a low budget. The cast and crew evidently enjoyed making this film and it shows both in the movie and on the hour-long Behind the Scenes feature. If you want to check out some other reviews, go to the dvd 'Junior Pilot', it's an earlier release of the same movie.

I'm yet to give this a go but it looks like a great Big B movie to me..I mean check this out..It have Eric Roberts and Mark Ducosis or whatever his name is as it's major 'stars'.


I managed to have about a 15 minute watch and just could not take anymore of what I was seeing.....I may give this another try in another fe months when I have nothing to do but watch paint dry or something along those lines.