2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

MovieManChuck 0.5/4It should be noted by everyone: 1 year after Joe Dante's big hit Gremlins, his stupid-funny Christmas monster movie, he comes back again with a HUGE failure. This piece of cinematic sin is known as "Explorers". Explorers is also the acting debut of now mainstream Ethan Hawke.It starts off centering around three outcast kids who are obsessed with science fiction. These kind of kids are not the kind that drive you to pity out of their shear social incompetence (sort of like Ronald Miller in "Can't Buy Me Love"), they simply don't fit into a niche and you're not poked at enough to care. They find a mystery blueprint and build a spaceship, and when they find the source of the blueprint....Well, I'm not going to spoil the ending. If you are able to stand the pointlessness that comes beforehand, you will be able to know the outcome. I will tell you this, it is the simple most sorry excuse for a climax in film history. I stand by everything I have just said. In the final 20 minutes, the lead boy (what's his name?) says "this is....not what I was expecting" in kind of a dismal tone. If the dang character is upset with the outcome, you ought to be too.The reason this is not one of my all time least-favorite movies (the ONLY reason) is because Joe Dante does have a sense of direction in this film....or maybe it should make me more scared to know he was present.

Derek Snyder There are many reasons a person could watch this movie. Young hackers, young astronauts, young sci-fi students, people who dive into their dreams... are we alone?? In this movie, the answer is there for all of them. It is an awesome movie, one of the great movies that touches the dreamer. For me, it was the ability of one of the kids in particular that made this a must watch from when I was a kid, even until now with my own children I had them watch it. The computer aspect of one of them making a logic / motherboard we will say out of the diagrams of one of the other kids dreams. It was awesome! The sphere that was created from a board hooked to a computer then was given x,y coordinates and destination information was just AWESEME!!! A must see for any and all ages. Hang on tight while you go on an adventure to... well... I wont spoil it for you. Great Movie!

LukeDSimpson 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.

pc95 Director Joe Dante, described in an interview that his "Explorers" did not turn out anything like he had planned. The article also surmises that Dante was forced to throw together a finished project hastily. These reports seem logical and the movie as a finished showing certainly supports his complaints. Unfortunately this seems to happen too often in Hollywood, where film studios try to mess with or control artistic processes. (spoilers) Anyway, "Explorers" opens up very well for the first third or so, and then loses some steam. However the alien ideas completely flop as does a cringe-worthy final 30 min. While the initial spider was well done, the green ETs are like Muppets in a bad not-meaning-to-be way. The idea should never have left paper. Still give this a 5/10. The child-actors do fairly well.