''Explorers'' is rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''). ''Explorers'' also marks a new triumph for Industrial Light and Magic, the special-effects outfit that has devised yet another way to show space travel, and makes the flight sequences really soar. It should be remembered, however, that this is the man who put a gremlin in a blender. Dante's sense of humor to good advantage. ''Explorers,'' which is lively but largely familiar until the point when it reaches its batty pinnacle, frequently shows off Mr. Dante is to be believed, there are creatures who know the sales pitch for Veg-o-matic. Dante and the screenwriter Eric Luke have given him Bugs Bunny, Ed Sullivan, Little Richard and Ricky Ricardo. This boy would like to find the secrets of the universe, at the very least instead, Mr. This is the film's most successful bit of irony. ''I hate to say it, but this isn't how I thought it would be at all,'' one of them announces nervously when they reach their destination. But it works and, at moments like this, the film does too. They take off in this magically functional craft while gobbling popcorn and chattering frantically. With the raffishness that is the movie's best source of humor, they build a spacecraft out of, among other things, old amusement-park parts, a spare tire, an old television screen and a ''Proceed With Caution'' sign. Once a movie's heroes have seen outer space, how're you gonna keep 'em down on the farm?įrom this point, it is only a small step to the boys' discovery that they can get inside this mysterious sphere and fly - anywhere. It's also a hard act to follow, as such sequences generally are.

This is the most distinctive part of ''Explorers,'' if also the looniest, and it is a long time in coming. He also envisions this wasteland as a weird visual extension of pulp science-fiction movies, 1950's-style. Dante's idea that the great beyond is already filling up with the detritus of American pop culture. Dante's segment of ''Twilight Zone - The Movie,'' in which an entire family took on the characteristics of cartoon creatures. In fact, it recalls nothing so much as Mr. T.'') - much of his approach is distinctly his own. Dante includes more than enough of the standard touches - skewed scenes of suburbia, dazzling airborne special effects and a poster-perfect leading boy (Ethan Hawke) with a resemblance to Henry Thomas (''E. It's charmingly odd at some moments, just plain goofy at others. OF all the Spielberg-inspired fantasy films afoot at the moment, Joe Dante's ''Explorers'' is by far the most eccentric.

The movie explorer