flying cars movie review

Flying Cars

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Jeremy Schuetze (Drew) Brittany Ray Schiff (Sadie) Mackenzie Lintz (Rachel) Jared Kusnitz (Chris) David Pevsner (Arnon) Blake Scott Lewis (Nate) Annabel Graham (Steph) Charley Rossman (Ray Carhart) Kenlon Clark (Brian Lutes) Phillip E. Walker (Thrift Store Employee)

Just weeks before his wedding, an aimless filmmaker stuck at an office job develops a secret obsession with radio-controlled car racing and meets a talented girl at the racetrack who agrees to coach him behind his fiancée's back.

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Flying Cars Reviews

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Flying Cars

Just weeks before his wedding, an aimless filmmaker stuck at an office job develops a secret obsession with radio-controlled car racing and meets a talented girl at the racetrack who agrees ... Read all Just weeks before his wedding, an aimless filmmaker stuck at an office job develops a secret obsession with radio-controlled car racing and meets a talented girl at the racetrack who agrees to coach him behind his fiancée's back. Just weeks before his wedding, an aimless filmmaker stuck at an office job develops a secret obsession with radio-controlled car racing and meets a talented girl at the racetrack who agrees to coach him behind his fiancée's back.

• Jeremy Schuetze
• Brittany Ray Schiff
• Mackenzie Lintz
• 8 User reviews
• 1 Critic review

• (as Regan James)

• (as Blake Lewis)

• Ray Carhart

• Brian Lutes

• Thrift Store Employee
• (as Phillip Walker)

• Racetrack Announcer
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• Police Officer #2
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User reviews 8

• Randomizer2600
• May 21, 2020
• June 23, 2019 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
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• North Hollywood, California, USA
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• Runtime 1 hour 28 minutes

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Flying Cars (2019) Stream and Watch Online

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Yearning to watch ' Flying Cars ' in the comfort of your own home? Discovering a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Dave Hill-directed movie via subscription can be confusing, so we here at Moviefone want to do the heavy lifting. Read on for a listing of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription choices - along with the availability of 'Flying Cars' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into all the details of how you can watch 'Flying Cars' right now, here are some specifics about the adventure flick. Released June 23rd, 2019, 'Flying Cars' stars Jeremy Schuetze , Mackenzie Lintz , Regan James The movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 28 min, and received a user score of 50 (out of 100) on TMDb, which assembled reviews from 3 knowledgeable users. Interested in knowing what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "Just weeks before his wedding an aimless filmmaker stuck at an office job develops a secret obsession with radiocontrolled car racing and meets a talented girl at the racetrack who agrees to coach him behind his fiancées back" 'Flying Cars' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Amazon Video, Google Play Movies, Apple iTunes, and YouTube .

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Flying cars.

Directed by Dave Hill

Just weeks before his wedding, an aimless filmmaker stuck at an office job develops a secret obsession with radio-controlled car racing and meets a talented girl at the racetrack who agrees to coach him behind his fiancée's back.

Jeremy Schuetze Mackenzie Lintz Regan James

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Trenton Waterson

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Releases by Date

23 jun 2019, releases by country.

• Premiere Los Angeles, California

88 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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Review by EBunny ★★ 1

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Did not understand Sadies werdo moodswings and overreacting to everything, he should have kept the car and been nicer to Rachel that just whanted to help him, he´s a real dick.

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World’s first flying car ‘Model A’ gets flight certified, and it’s 100% electric

A fully electric car you can drive on public roads and fly to skip traffic may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but Alef Aeronautics is making it a reality. The company revealed Tuesday that its flying car, “Model A,” became the first of its kind to receive legal approval to fly from the US government.

Meet the first electric flying car to get certified in the US

The same year Marty McFly from Back to the Future traveled to, well, the future (2015), the idea of Alef’s flying car was also born.

In 2016, the company built its first subscale prototype to fit specific constraints, including driving like a real car, having vertical takeoff abilities, and being relatively affordable.

The scaled version and Alef’s proprietary electric propulsion were shown to Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist and early Tesla investor, who became the pioneering investor in the company.

Draper Associates Fund V invested $3 million in seed money to jump-start the program. Last October, Alef introduced the “Model A” to the world as the first electric flying car with real street driving and vertical takeoff and landing ( eVTOL ) abilities.

According to Alef, the Model A has a 200-mile driving range and a flight range of 110 miles. After presales began last October for $300,000 (with a $150 regular queue or $1,500 priority queue deposit), Alef says it had collected over 440 reservations by the end of the year.

Alef’s Model A was the first vehicle of its kind to receive a Special Airworthiness Certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration. CEO Jim Dukhovny commented on the accomplishment, saying:

We’re excited to receive this certification from the FAA. It allows us to move closer to bringing people an environmentally friendly and faster commute, saving individuals and companies hours each week. This is a one small step for planes, one giant step for cars.

Top comment by Herbert Pfuhl

My only question is the FAA going to make a new license type for these craft. Modern PPLs have massive restrictions and medical requirements. I.e. you can't take any anti-depressive or anti-anxiety meds and if you do you either need to go through a massive costly process to get a medical certification or stop taking them for 90 days ans be cleared by your doctor. Yeah this will work out real well. Even technically under Sport Pilot if you know you have a medical condition that might "make you unsafe" you can be held to task for it.

The company says it has been test-driving and test-flying full-size prototypes since 2019. Model A production is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025, with deliveries starting shortly after.

Alef is also developing additional models, including a four-person sedan, “Model Z,” slated to debut in 2035, with a starting price of $35K. The company claims it will have an over 300-mile flying range with an over 220-mile driving range.

Several other automakers and startups are also working on bringing “flying cars” or eVTOLs to market, such as XPeng. The EV startup’s Aero HT was the first crewed eVTOL to receive a flight permit in China earlier this year.

Image credit: Alef Aeronautics

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Peter Johnson is covering the auto industry’s step-by-step transformation to electric vehicles. He is an experienced investor, financial writer, and EV enthusiast. His enthusiasm for electric vehicles, primarily Tesla, is a significant reason he pursued a career in investments. If he isn’t telling you about his latest 10K findings, you can find him enjoying the outdoors or exercising

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Science or Fiction in 50 Years: Flying Cars

Meet George Jetson. Will we fly to work?

TDLR : Yes.

We have no shortage of flying cars in our literature and especially in our movies and television. It is a topic approachable to nearly everyone as they sit in gridlock traffic or take a four hour drive to the beach.  We love to imagine a quick 50 minute flight to your favorite ski mountain and a 15 minute commute into the city every day, guaranteed. Instead of dividing our stories into eras as we’ve done in previous columns, we are going to break out our science fiction writer concepts by means of propulsion.

Add wings to a car

Jules Verne gets credit for the first reference to a flying car less than a year after the Kitty Hawk flight, what a baller.  But it is Robert Heinlein who deserves the most credit of any writer, all the way up to today, for his detailed description of the flying car in For Us, The Living .  RAH provides fantastic detail into the different battery chemistry that enables them to be significantly lighter. He spends time on the redundant safety systems and the variations between a family model and other flying vehicles.  But most importantly, he describes the automation in the software that makes human piloting mostly a personal choice. 

Master of the World by Jules Verne (1904)

For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert Heinlein (1938)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

Inspector Gadget (1983)

New form of power

Fusion, perpetual motion, and magic cover the majority of our stories and movies where the vehicle shows no aerodynamic characteristics.  I hate to say it, but the Absent Minded Professor provides the most detailed explanation for his power source, which is sad.  As we look at real world flying car possibilities, we won’t spend time on not-yet invented power sources.  Or magic.

The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)

The Jetsons (1962)

The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson (1967)

The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein (1980)

Blade Runner (1982)

Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rawling (1998)

There are a number of startups actively working on flying cars.  This is not new. The Ford Flivver came out in 1927.  In 1947 the ConVair attempted to bridge car and plane.  Every 20 years we see another attempt.  But the latest companies are tackling the flying car challenge in a new way that addresses the shortcomings of previous efforts.

First, and most importantly, software will take the place of piloting skills.  Previous attempts at flying cars were more like airplanes or helicopters that could drive on the ground. You needed a pilot license.  Even then, 50% of helicopter accidents occur due to pilot error.  More if you assume that maintenance issues are also human error. Today’s software is already advanced enough to remove the need for a pilot’s license.  Look to the latest drones to see how effective software can replace a human at this task.  Drones are incredibly effective at getting back home, adjusting to wind, and remaining stable when flown by tiny hands.  We shouldn’t be surprised if our future flying cars have only override controls in case of an emergency.

Second, we need a power source that doesn’t require specialized fuel.  A tip of the hat goes to Tesla for making fast battery charging a reality.  Ideally we could get the weight of our batteries down significantly, but an intelligent use of lift in the wing design buys us some distance.  Designs that incorporate fixed wing as well as vertical lift provide our future flying car with the ability to glide over the air versus constantly fighting gravity.  

Last, we should keep an eye on materials.  Boring ole metal will make up a significant part of the weight of our vehicle. As we develop new techniques in casting, as seen by the Cybertruck, and new composite materials, we will see significant benefits in our flyable distances.  This will also be important in getting the overall size of the vehicle down to something closer to one to two car widths. 

A few companies are taking advantage of these three trends.  ASKA , which recently opened a showroom in Los Altos, CA, is betting that all of the above opens the door to a new entrant.  If they can find enough patient capital to take the journey with them, we might see our first fleet of flying cars within five years. Like Tesla, you should expect the first units to be priced out of your range.  But it only takes sales of 500 ASKAs to convince more investors to pour funds into adding mass production.

Just down the street in Mountain View the company Kitty Hawk, known for attracting Google founder Larry Page as the sponsor, is developing a concept called Heaviside that uses eight motors and a large wing.  Every flight with Heaviside has been remote-controlled. They have a beautiful video of it here .

There are a number of other companies working on concepts like these, but I think these two stand out as companies that will rely heavily on software.  Often when a hardware company starts, it is founded by people who love to build and who don’t value software.  But starting with software leads to major leaps in value to the consumer.  Apple wiped out the old hardware phone companies.  Tesla and others are on their way to doing this with the automotive companies.  Software that flies for you will remove the skill barrier, and it is 1000 times easier to write autonomous flying software than driving software, so we can expect all of this to be possible well within our lifetime. 

Therefore the only thing holding us back is cost, and that is something we can work relentlessly towards in the near future.

Verdict : Flying cars within 50.

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There are many memorable flying cars seen in sci-fi movies. The genre of science fiction is all about exploring technological and futuristic possibilities beyond those of modern times or of the observable world. Sometimes it involves aliens, other times it involves time-travel, and a slew of other concepts are also frequently the basis for sci-fi stories. When it comes to the technological advances in sci-fi movies, one of the most popular is flying cars.

Sci-fi movies seldom devote much attention to explaining the actual science behind cars that can take off into the air. At the same time, they do not need to, with the idea itself being too fun a concept to get hung up on such details. While some flying cars in sci-fi movies have been makeshift vehicles designed to soar into the sky on a whim, others are considerably more state-of-the-art, and can even come with other sci-fi features. Here are the top 10 flying cars seen in sci-fi movies.

10 The AMC Matador Coupé - The Man With The Golden Gun

The '60s era of the 007 franchise is notoriously full of sci-fi elements in the gadgetry employed by James Bond, and The Man With The Golden Gun has one of its own in the movie's flying AMC Matador Coupé. Outfitted with wings and more or less reworked to be an airplane-car hybrid, the AMC Matador Coupé is not one of the wackier sci-fi tools of the Connery-Moore era of the Bond movies, but still a stand-out among them. The Man With The Golden Gun almost killed Bond cinematically, but the flying AMC Matador Coupé is still a memorable James Bond car that exemplifies the campiness of the '60s Bond movies as much as any.

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9 The Eagle-5 - Spaceballs

Mel Brooks's loving spoofs the Star Wars franchise with his 1987 comedy Spaceballs , and it includes its own flying car dubbed the Eagle-5. Essentially a riff on the Millennium Falcon, the Eagle-5 is a camper with wings piloted by the movie's Han Solo equivalent, Lone Starr (Bill Pullman). The actual functionality of the Eagle-5 zipping through space at lightspeed is completely beside the point for Spaceballs . It is all about putting a comedic riff on the epic space opera of Star Wars and the grandeur of the Millennium Falcon.

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8 Phillip's Flying Car - Flubber

The 1997 remake of The Absent-Minded Professor , Flubber stars Robin Williams as Dr. Phillip Brainard, who inadvertently invites a sentient and highly-bouncable green blob that he dubs Flubber. With some more controlled experimentation, Phillip manages to design a flying car powered by Flubber, which comes in handy to help save his near-bankrupt college. With the always hilarious Robin Williams bringing the laughs, Flubber also invents another of the most memorable flying cars in sci-fi movies with the comedic hijinks it is employed in.

7 The Flying Cars Of Total Recall (2012)

The 2012 remake of Total Recall makes a fair amount of tweaks to its story compared to it Arnold Schwarzenegger-led 1990 counterpart, and it has more than its share of stand-out sci-fi tools and vehicles. Among them are the flying cars of the Total Recall remake, and they definitely deliver as mini-airplanes zooming through the movie's chase scenes at 100 mph. The colossal elevator transporting miners from one end of the Earth to another is the most stand-out vehicle of the Total Recall remake, but its flying cars run it a close second.

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6 The Flying Cars Of The Fifth Element

The '90s sci-fi relic The Fifth Element goes all in on every futuristic update to society and architecture possible, and that includes its plethora of flying cars. Obviously, the most prominent is the flying cab piloted by Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis). Additionally, more than most sci-fi movies with flying cars, The Fifth Element shows the reality of what a city of the future full of flying cars would look like, the gaps between buildings being runways full of flying cars zooming in every direction hundreds of feet above the ground.

5 Spinners - Blade Runner

Ridley Scott's sci-fi cult classic Blader Runner is full of some of the most awe-inspiring futuristic tech in sci-fi movies. These include flying cars, which are known as " Spinners " in the Blade Runner universe, and which stand as greatly enduring sci-fi vehicles decades after the movie's release. Especially considering the comparative limitations on visual effects back in the early '80s, the Spinners of Blade Runner have aged extremely well.

• A vailable To Stream On Hulu

4 New Spinners - Blade Runner 2049

The belated sequel to the original Blade Runner , 2017's Blade Runner 2049 brings the originals Spinners back with a vengeance. With modern visual effects and camera magic to augment their presentation, the Spinners in Blade Runner 2049 are even more eye-popping than in the original, ranging from Police Spinners and other new Spinner models. As a worthy follow-up to a sci-fi classic decades later, Blade Runner 2049 also makes sure its Spinners are as state-of-the-art as possible.

3 The Space Car - F9

If any modern action movie franchise can get away with incorporating a space-car, it is the Fast & Furious series, and F9 takes to the stars with Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) at the helm of a rocket car. Tej and Roman's mission is to stop a doomsday device attached to a satellite, and the lack of realism in F9 's space car and Tej and Roman's makeshift astronaut suits is as absurd as anything the Fast Saga has ever done. That, of course, is exactly what gives the Fast Saga its crowd-pleasing charm, and F9 's rocket car fits right into the franchise's silly tone.

RELATED: Every Car The Main Characters Drive In F9

2 Luke Skaywalker's Landspeeder - Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope

The Star Wars universe is full of all kinds of advanced and often massive interstellar spacecraft, but 1977's A New Hope manages to work in its own space car in the form of Luke Skywalker's landspeeder. Hovering just a few feet above the ground, Luke's landspeeder is still one of the stand-out vehicles of A New Hope as the kind of car every sci-fi nerd dreams of owning. Luke Skywalker's landspeeder might not be as advanced as the Millennium Falcon, but it gets the job done zipping Luke and his passengers across Tatooine, with Luke's landspeeder even returning in The Mandalorian .

• Available To Stream On Disney+

1 The Flying DeLorean - Back to the Future/Back To The Future Part II

When it comes to flying cars in sci-fi movies, none can compare to Doc Brown's airborne, time-traveling DMC DeLorean. First introduced in the final scene of Back to the Future , the DeLorean's flying capabilities are shown to their fullest in Back to the Future Part II , and it remains Doc Brown's all-time greatest invention. As the only flying car in sci-fi movies not only capable of time-travel but fueled by literal garbage, Back to the Future 's flying DeLorean takes the honor of the coolest flying car in sci-fi movies.

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The 5 Best Flying Cars In Movies That We Wish Were Real

Flying cars have long been part of popular culture and the most common fantasy representation of transportation in the not-so-far-away future. Perhaps the most popular type of flying car is the saucer-like vehicle featured in the cartoon "The Jetsons," though many people are no doubt thinking about the DeLorean from "Back to the Future" or more recent examples like the flying car from Harry Potter.

There are countless depictions of flying cars in the media that represent both the possible and the impossible, and though some of them are plain, others are very creative and all of them are magical. It's easy to see the appeal of these vehicles — they're stylish, move at fast speeds in impossible ways, and are often powered by long-lasting energy sources. The real-life version of this technology takes the form of eVTOL , but its fictional counterparts shed the limitations of physics to include everything from enchanted passenger cars to hoverbikes and plane-car hybrids.

The Spinners from Blade Runner

When it comes to depictions of flying cars in cinema, one movie that often comes to mind is "Blade Runner." The sci-fi universe depicted in the movies is home to fictional cars called Spinners, and they are pretty awesome. The term is generic, and therefore each vehicle is simply referred to as a Spinner rather than by a specific model name. For many "Blade Runner" fans, the Spinners are a true stand-out example of a fantasy flying car.

These futuristic vehicles can be driven like normal cars on the road, but where's the fun in that? The real excitement is when they take off vertically, hover, and cruise like aircraft. In the context of the movie, this was a vehicle used by the Los Angeles Police Department to survey the citizens in the same way that police officers in the real world use patrol cars. The Spinners appeared in four movies, and "Back to the Future Part II" also paid tribute to the iconic movie car. The Spinner concept was designed by artist and industrial designer  Syd Mead , who also made designs for movies like "Tron" and "Aliens."

The Ford Anglia 105E from Harry Potter

Fans of the Harry Potter franchise are in love with the flying car that was owned by Arthur Weasley — and the thing is, this is actually a real car. Sadly, the real-world version of this vehicle doesn't fly, as that would require magic, literally. In the movie, the Ford Anglia is a normal car until it receives an enchantment that gives it flying capabilities. Though there are far more exciting aspects of the Wizarding World, people really love seeing this car whizzing through the sky, if only on the big screen.

Most will remember Ron Weasley using the fantasy vehicle to rescue his friends. If you ever want to see the car used in the movie in real life, you can find the 1966 Ford Anglia 105E at the National Motor Museum . This car is a product of Great Britain; it boasts an in-line 4-cylinder engine with a 997cc capacity, 41 horsepower at 5,000 rpm, and a max speed of only 76 miles per hour, according to the museum.

The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car

If you're even a casual fan of classic MGM films, you've likely seen the 1968 movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." In the film, the car after which the movie is named can fly, float, and be driven just like a normal car. The vehicle's fictional British inventor Caractacus Potts restored the car after an automobile accident during a race. This is important because the story of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was inspired by a racecar that the author Ian Fleming — who also wrote the James Bond books — had seen as a child.

The cars used for the film were customized vehicles. There were a total of seven built for production, and six are known to still exist today, with one on display at the National Motor Museum . Only one of the vehicles created for the movie was actually operational. According to Motorious , the functional movie vehicle packed a 3-liter 6-cylinder engine from Ford, and it got its iconic looks, in part, from a piece of a dashboard taken out of an old World War I fighter jet.

The DeLorean DMC-12 from Back to the Future

When it comes to flying cars in media, the "Back to the Future" films are often a topic of conversation. These are the movies people turn to when they wonder why we still don't have flying cars, and that's partly due to how the movie from the 1980s made the concept of a flying car seem so simple. However, the Doc's DeLorean DMC-12 wasn't technically a flying car, but rather a time machine that, through fantasy physics, was able to fly as part of its movement through spacetime. 

That technicality aside, it's impossible to talk about flying cars and not mention the "Back to the Future" machine. Though the real-life version of this vehicle isn't able to blink out of existence, of course, it remains a pop culture icon, and that popularity helped bring the model back from the dead. The DeLorean was revealed in 2022 with a new aesthetic and EV underpinning, and it's now referred to as the Alpha 5 , hopefully kickstarting an entirely new line of electric vehicles.

The Landspeeder from Star Wars

The Star Wars movies are a part of American culture that binds generations. Sure, not everyone is a fan of the science fiction universe, but the movies still hold a special place in the hearts of many. Though the stories have carried the Star Wars universe for decades, there are certain elements from within the movies that stand out as particularly eye-catching. One example of that is the Landspeeder, a type of ground-based hovering car that was owned by Luke Skywalker and featured at various points in the series. 

The Star Wars universe is home to several different versions of the Landspeeder, including the X-34 model owned by Skywalker, the XP-38 sport model, and the inexpensive V-35 Courier (via Star Wars ). It's easy to see the appeal of these flying cars: they're simple to get in and out of, there's enough room for two people and at least one android, and they can travel anywhere there's open space regardless of whether there's a paved road available. Unfortunately, it's unlikely we'll ever see a personal-use vehicle like this become a reality, but it's fun to dream about.

The Hover Cars in Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie Might Actually Be Possible

It all comes down to magnets.

In 1989, we were told the transportation of the future would float — as long as you weren’t over a body of water.

That’s the year Back to the Future Part II was released, which, as anyone who was a child in the late ’80s or early ’90s will tell you, was the cool one. Not because of plot, necessarily, but because that’s when Marty McFly (impersonating his future son) first took off on a hoverboard. But in the streets around him, you also had floating and flying cars.

The year is 2024 now, and we could be facing down a second Biff Tannen presidency, so where are our floating cars and hoverboards? Could we even make those? The answer right now is a solid… kind of, but it would be difficult and come with unintended consequences. And that’s because of how we’ve accomplished it thus far.

Levitation, How Does It Work?

The fundamentals of levitation are relatively easy. A paper published in Physical Review Applied last fall demonstrated the ability to make a magnet hover in place with, of all things, a Dremel tool. It built off a discovery first made by Hamdi Ucar in a paper published in Symmetry in 2021. Ucar’s discovery initially made Rasmus Bjørk , who led last year’s paper, very skeptical of the research.

“I browsed through it, and then decided that looks really long and it was published in some obscure journal that I hadn’t heard of before, so I didn’t give it a lot of credibility, it didn’t look sort of entirely plausible,” Bjørk,a professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), tells Inverse. Two weeks later, a colleague contacted him about the paper, and Bjørk told him he didn’t buy it. “Then he wrote back, ‘But have you seen his YouTube channel?’”

“You need a high-speed motor and some magnets.”

That channel has, to date, 219 videos of various objects levitating. Eggshells, test tubes, walnuts, and lots and lots of bearings, many looking like they’ve been taken on a cellphone. It also, according to Bjørk, relies only on classical physics, nothing elaborate needed. It could really have been discovered anytime since 1865, when James Clerk Maxwell first described his theories on electromagnetism that proved foundational in our understanding of magnetic fields. “It doesn’t even require a very elaborate experimental setup,” he says. “You need a high-speed motor and some magnets.”

This new levitation method was real, but how did it work?

If you’ve played with magnets before, you know that there are positive and negative poles; opposites attract, and two magnets oriented to the same pole repel. Joachim Hermansen , a Ph.D. student in medical technology at DTU who has worked with Bjørk on the project, tells Inverse that the dremel needs enough space from the magnet and to reach a steady state in its energy output.

“What happens is basically that the magnet on the dremel acts as both a repelling force to the magnet when it gets too close, and ... an attractive force when it gets (farther) away,” he says. And as the magnet tumbles over and over, it creates a sort of stable levitation. But the magnet has to continue to spin for this to really work. “It’s gyroscopically stabilized the same way a spinning top is stabilized, so it doesn’t fall over because of gravity,” Frederik Laust Durhuus , a DTU physics Ph.D. student also involved in the research, adds. According to Rasmus, the poles of the magnet and the dremel need to align in order to reach this hovering state.

Hovering At Scale

“Maybe sometime in the future we will be able to make something that could do that kind of thing.”

Now, an egg and a dremel is one thing. But how do you get a hoverboard or floating car out of the deal? In principle, a large object doesn’t need as fast a rotation from a proportionally equal dremel, according to the group. (“The magnetic fields don’t care about sizes as long as everything is relatively the same size,” Bjørk says.) But gravity does care, making stabilizing larger objects more difficult. Basically, the heavier the object, the more likely it is to fall out of levitation due to the effects of gravity.

Because of this, the most immediate application is using the technology to hover things around, what Durhuus calls “contactless object handling.” “As long as the object is magnetic, you can do that with quite a lot of dexterity, having it fixed in the air and then moving around the rotating device,” he says.

“The technology I have right now requires magnets on both ends, so you need magnetically paved roads.”

Bjørk says that a basic problem is trying to get an object to levitate above one of the magnets. “You can’t levitate anything above anything like the hoverboard, which would be super nice if you could,” he says. If you try, it throws off the delicate balance of this magnetism. And even if you magnetized the roads, which you’d have to do to hover objects above them in this, it could have unintended consequences on other electronics or just magnetized metals in general. This is especially true with the kind of very strong magnets you’d need to make this work on a human scale in the first place. “So that is not necessarily the way to go — instead more research to improve and understand the phenomenon is needed,” Rasmus says.

But by understanding the particulars of this technology, new understandings of magnetism could usher in breakthroughs that bring us closer and closer to the hoverboard.

“Maybe if we understand this, maybe sometime in the future we will be able to make something that could do that kind of thing,” Bjørk says. “If we study these things in depth, what else can we discover? So, I’m not ruling it out, but the technology I have right now requires magnets on both ends, so you need magnetically paved roads.”

In other words, the movie got one thing right — if you get caught trying to hover over water, the bullies are going to get you.

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Science News Explores

Where are the flying cars .

Such airborne vehicles have been promised for decades — and may be closer than you think  

People have been dreaming of flying cars for a long time. The Jetsons (shown), for instance, was a 1960s-era television cartoon show that depicted a family living in the future. Their flying car helped the Jetson family travel across Orbit City.

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By Helen Bradshaw

July 15, 2024 at 6:30 am

Kids like Tola Martins in Disney’s Iwájú don’t drive to school, they fly. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley pulled a similar stunt when they missed the train to Hogwarts. As did Flint Lockwood when he had to stop a giant spaghetti storm in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs .  

Flying cars have soared through sci-fi and fantasy stories since the early 1900s. But they’re not flying across our actual skies. At least, not yet. And if they do someday become commonplace, they might look a bit different than in the movies. 

The technology to make flying cars already exists, says Xiaosong Du. He’s an aerospace engineer at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. Hundreds of companies, such as Terrafugia, are working to make flying cars a reality. Some have even flown prototypes, such as Joby Aviation’s air taxi and Airbus’ Vahana.  

The key to making flying cars work is a combination of helicopter and airplane technology, Du says. It would not be very practical for flying cars to take off like airplanes. For that, they’d need runways, which would take up lots of space. Instead, a flying car would take off vertically, like a helicopter. Rotating blades would chop through the air, generating a force known as lift to bring the vehicle off the ground. 

“Once it’s completed takeoff,” Du says, “you can fly like a normal airplane.” Airplane wings could rotate out from the body of the aircraft, allowing for flight with less air resistance than a helicopter experiences.  

Another option is to attach propellers to a flying car’s wings. At first, the wings would be tilted upwards, so that the propellers could lift the vehicle. Then, once the car takes off, the wings would tilt to lay flat, like those on a normal airplane, says Pat Anderson. “It’s like a Transformer.” Anderson is the former director of the Eagle Flight Research Center at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. 

Vehicles with rotating blades and propellers don’t sound much like the flying cars of science fiction. They don’t even sound much like cars. Instead, these vehicles would look more like the two-winged choppers that military personnel pilot around Pandora in the Avatar movies, Anderson says.  

Still, building airborne cars is about more than just bringing sci-fi to life. It’s about using more of the available space in the world to get people where they need to go. Today’s drivers can only travel in two dimensions: north-south and east-west. Flying cars could unlock a third dimension: up-down. Imagine a world where you could beat rush-hour traffic by simply lifting off the ground and zooming over the other drivers.  

This could be especially useful as the world’s population continues to grow. “I think that, eventually, we will see a day where we use the third dimension to help us get around,” Anderson says. “Otherwise, [Earth is] going to be a pretty congested place.” 

What’s the holdup? 

One of the biggest barriers to people commuting in flying cars is expense. The company Alef Aeronautics, for instance, plans to sell personal cars that can drive on roads and take off into the skies. These cars look and function similarly to those in many science fiction movies, but they come with a steep price tag. When they go into production as early as next year, the cars will likely cost around $300,000 each.  

A handful of wealthy people may own cars like these, Anderson says. But most people could never afford one. Even repair costs would be much more expensive than for a normal car. “If you get in a fender bender, you just destroyed an airplane instead of a car,” Anderson says. 

But average people may still ride in flying vehicles one day. Anderson imagines that a rideshare service for flying cars — something like Uber or Lyft for the skies — may be more practical than everyone owning one. 

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Even though some companies plan to release cars sooner, flying Ubers probably won’t be common for 10 or 20 years, Anderson says. First, aircraft need to be tested over and over for safety. And the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will need to create regulations for flying cars. Rules of the road aren’t enough. Flying cars will need rules of the sky. “You don’t want airplanes falling on top of other people and hurting them,” Anderson says. 

Du agrees that “reliability and safety are the key topics” now for making flying cars a reality.  

Powering flying taxis is another holdup. Because of their sustainability, “people are kind of in love with batteries,” Anderson says. But batteries are heavy, and — like those in electric cars — have a limited range.  

Flying takes a lot of power, especially during takeoff. Current rechargeable lithium-ion batteries can only support flying cars for 20 to 30 minutes, Du says. And while a car that runs out of charge can simply pull over, a flying car would fall out of the sky. So it’s extra important that these batteries last. That’s why researchers like Du are trying to improve battery efficiency before flying taxis hit the market. 

After making sure they’re safe and energy-efficient, a big step would be to make flying cars self-driving. Even self-driving cars on the ground are still a rarity. But if self-piloting vehicles ever got off the ground, kids of the future might be able to skip a flying license test and head straight to the skies. 

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Flying cars in movies and TV and the real-life vehicles they inspired

• The FAA just approved the first electric flying car, the Alef Model A, for test flights.
• The first flying car, a Model T with wings attached, was created 106 years ago.
• In 1930, the first flying car was featured in a movie, kicking off a long line of flying cars appearing on screen. 

Earlier this month, Alef Automotive, a California-based automotive and aviation company, received a special airworthiness certificate from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for their flying car.

The certificate permits Alef to conduct experimental flight tests on their new fully electric flying car, dubbed the "Model A." This marks the first time the FAA has ever granted legal permission to test-run a flying electric vehicle like the Model A. When built, the Model A will be able to maneuver on roads and in the air and perform vertical takeoff maneuvers from a complete stop. 

The possibility of a flying car being available for an estimated $300,000  is exciting, but humans and engineers have been fascinated with the idea of flying cars for over 100 years. Why are we only getting flying cars now? 

The first "modern car," made by Carl Benz, was invented in 1885, and the first widely accessible car, the Model T Ford , hit the market in 1908. Only nine years after the invention of the Model T, Glenn Curtiss took aim at one of the first attempts at a flying car.

With the potential of flying cars around the corner, here's a look through the history of our obsession with making cars fly and the ups and downs that have come with it. 

Ancient stories and depictions of gods in ancient Mesopotamia or Greece frequently had them flying around in chariots.

In the 16th-century text "The Man in the Moone," Francis Goodwin imagined that humans might journey to the moon on a chariot pulled by geese.

The New York Times article was titled " Maxim's Flying Car, " referring to Hiram Stevens Maxim, the inventor behind the first machine gun. In this instance, the term "car" most likely referenced a carriage. 

According to the article, Maxim and his team flew 500 feet at a rate of "something like 45 miles per hour." The description of the machine is what separates it from an actual car; it was "100 feet wide with four side sails and, when seen in the air, will give the impression of an enormous bird." 

More closely resembling an early attempt at a plane than an actual flying car, the headline pointed to the mythology of the flying car. 

The automobile as we know it had just been invented in 1908, and the Wright brothers had made their first successful flight not too long before that, in 1903. Glenn Curtiss, the man behind the V8 engine and a major contributor to aeronautic engineering, figured: Why not put the two together? 

In 1917, in front of a crowd at the Pan American Aeronautical Exposition of 1917, Curtiss attempted to take off in his flying car , according to a NASA paper on flying cars. The car performed more of a hop than it did take flight, and with no financial backers for the project, Curtiss never pursued the idea further. 

"Just Imagine" has scenes with people flying around in machines that look more like planes than cars but can perform vertical take-offs and landings. In the movie, the aircraft moves through the air in straight lines, like cars in the sky. 

The film takes place in a futuristic society where food has become pills, names have become numbers, and the government decides who people can or cannot marry. The technologically-advanced vision in "Just Imagine" took place in 1980, which might explain why flying car depictions and attempts started becoming more prolific. 

The idea behind the vehicle seems a little absurd, especially since it looks more like a futuristic helicopter than it resembles a car. 

The Aska A5 flying car prototype has rotary blades that fold in and out from the top, can fly 250 miles, and is an electric vehicle. According to Military and Aerospace Electronics, the car has also earned FAA airworthiness certification to begin testing phases. 

Looking at H.G. Wells' idea of a flying car and what we have started to achieve, it appears that Wells wasn't too far off base.

The 60s saw a boom of flying cars in pop culture, starting with Disney's "The Absent-Minded Professor."

"The Absent-Minded Professor" was a departure from the science fiction movies of the early 20th century in its fantastical, rather than practical, approach to the flying car. 

The flying car in "The Absent-Minded Professor" is achieved through an anti-gravity substance called flubber, created by the professor himself, which allows the car to fly without any changes to the frame or additions of rotors or wings. 

"The Jetsons" premiered in September 1962 and only lasted one season (though it would return for two additional seasons in the 1980s), but its impact persists today. The cartoon depicted an idealized version of the future that was "a distillation of every Space Age promise Americans could muster," according to Smithsonian Magazine .

The previous Convair Model 116 managed 66 successful flight tests, according to Complex . They improved the design for the Model 118, but it only had one test flight.  The test flight lasted an hour, but had to make an emergency landing because of low fuel. The pilot had to make an emergency landing that destroyed the car, damaged the wings, and injured the pilot, according to Popular Mechanics . 

In 1971, Henry Smolinski and Harold Blake died when their flying car prototype crashed and exploded.

The two engineers from California were taking their car on a test flight when black smoke began emanating from it . The car crashed, and the two died as a result.

1982's "Blade Runner," takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. In this universe, flying cars are as abundant as normal cars. 

In reality, flying cars didn't make it to the skies of Los Angeles in 2019. The movie "Just Imagine" believed we'd soar around in our flying cars or personal planes by the 1980s. Though there were multiple attempts to make it happen, none ended up taking off.

In an interview with The New York Times , John Brown, the chief editor of Roadable Times, said through all the different iterations of flying cars, "none have been practical." 

"Cars have an aerodynamic that makes them hug the ground, whereas an aircraft is designed to do just the opposite," Brown told The Times, "and cars need even weight distribution on all four wheels, while an aircraft has 90 percent of its weight on the back wheels."

In addition to that, it's hard to figure out insurance and licensing around flying cars. Some of them require pilot licenses, like Klein Visions Air car , and others only require a driver's license . 

The Pal-V, a flying car from the Netherlands, requires a pilot's license to operate and has components that fold in or pop up to make it flight-ready in 10 minutes.  

The car-helicopter hybrid will cost $400,000, according to the BBC . 

The Alef Model A will cost $300,000, but the company hopes to bring the cost-per-vehicle down to $35,000 by 2035, Insider reported.

The design of the car is a departure from traditional models of flying cars, but Alef cites " Back to the Future" as the inspiration behind the design of the car.

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Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, fly me to the moon.

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“Fly Me to the Moon” lurches wildly from zippy, retro rom-com to cynical political satire to weighty, remorseful drama and back again. Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti ’s film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum , who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other. 

Johansson is especially charismatic here as  Kelly Jones , a late-’60s ad executive who gets plucked from a Manhattan agency to sell the space program to the American people. She’s Don Draper in a pink pencil skirt – and all hail costume designer Mary Zophres, the longtime Coen brothers' collaborator, who has amassed a truly dazzling array of mid-century chic ensembles for these actors to wear. The shadowy government figure who approaches Kelly in a bar about the gig ( Woody Harrelson , playfully menacing in a fedora) comments on how useful her beauty is in her line of work. But her ability to read people and figure out what makes them tick makes her even more formidable.  

Watching Kelly transform herself from one moment to the next into whoever she needs to be to get her way provides the primary source of joy in Berlanti’s film, based on a screenplay by Rose Gilroy . Is she a compulsive liar? Perhaps. But she’s also extremely good at her job. 

Which is why her supposed romantic connection with Tatum’s launch director Cole Davis makes no sense, beyond the fact that these are both inordinately gorgeous people. Kelly and Cole meet cute one night in the neon glow of a Cocoa Beach, Florida, diner; the next day, they have an awkward moment straight out of “ Top Gun ” when they realize they’ll be forced to work together. But Cole wants no part of Kelly’s shenanigans; a brilliant pilot who should have been an astronaut himself, he’s all business, and he remains consumed by the tragedy of Apollo 1 even as the Apollo 11 moon mission looms large on the horizon. He's kind of a drag.

Snappy banter is crucial to this kind of screwball romantic comedy. “Fly Me to the Moon” aims for the kind of sparks we’ve enjoyed in all those  Rock Hudson and Doris Day  classics. Here, it often feels like Johansson and Tatum are in entirely different movies. She’s effervescent and fearless; he’s stoic and apprehensive. Interestingly, Chris Evans originally was meant to play Cole, and would have been a much better fit, only partly because he and Johansson are longtime friends in real life. There’s a lightness required here that Tatum can’t seem to summon, although that's also because it's missing on the page. And later in the film, when Kelly and Cole sit down to reveal their demons to each other, the movie grinds to a halt for these tedious exposition dumps. 

Cole would be particularly irate to learn that part of Kelly’s assignment includes hiring a director and actors to fake the moon landing on a soundstage in case the real one fails. This, of course, has been a conspiracy theory for decades, including the notion that Stanley Kubrick himself was at the helm – the inspiration for a couple of flat, throwaway jokes here.  Jim Rash chews up the scenery as a wildly flamboyant but frustrated filmmaker who finally gets the chance to show off his artistry, even if no one can know about it. He definitely knows what movie he’s in – or at least, what movie this could have been. 

From here, “Fly Me to the Moon” gets bogged down in multiple endings, with a back-and-forth as to what’s real and what’s fake that eventually becomes jumbled. It keeps going and going past what might have been a natural conclusion, spelling out motivations and developments that would have been more intriguing if they’d been left to our imagination. Berlanti’s movie is far more effective as an upbeat farce than a poignant drama, and at well over two hours, the last 30 minutes or so feel like an eternity.  

Capable supporting players like Ray Romano and Anna Garcia can only do so much through all these highs and lows with the thin characters they’re given. And Colin Jost of “Saturday Night Live” – who happens to be Johansson’s husband – is truly terrible in the briefest of cameos as a senator she’s trying to woo for his support. It’s such a hammy performance, though, that it almost seems intentional. 

Still, this scene is indicative of the confusion that serves as the film’s wobbly throughline. Is this a comedy or a drama? Is it nostalgia or historical critique? Things keep catching on fire amid the chaos of “Fly Me to the Moon,” and maybe that’s the most apt metaphor of all. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Fly Me to the Moon (2024)

Rated PG-13

132 minutes

Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Jones

Channing Tatum as Cole Davis

Woody Harrelson as Moe Berkus

Jim Rash as Lance Vespertine

Ray Romano as Henry Smalls

• Greg Berlanti
• Rose Gilroy

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Dangerous missions are the bread and butter of the Thunderbirds, a high-tech secret force employed by the government. Led by Jeff Tracy (Bill Paxton), the Thunderbirds are at the top of their game, but their nemesis, The Hood (Ben Kingsley), has landed on their island and is attempting a coup by using the team's rescue vehicles. He'll soon discover that the Thunderbirds won't go down.

The stars of a 1970s sci-fi show - now scraping a living through re-runs and sci-fi conventions - are beamed aboard an alien spacecraft. Believing the cast's heroic on-screen dramas are historical documents of real-life adventures, the band of aliens turn to the ailing celebrities for help in their quest to overcome the oppressive regime in their solar system.

In a world where monster wrestling is a global sport and monsters are superstar athletes, teenage Winnie seeks to follow in her father’s footsteps by coaching a loveable underdog monster into a champion.

Tells the story about Karan, a young, spirited, sporty boy who lives life off the rules and Sana, a young petite, shy girl who lives life by the rules. This develops into a magical love story. Karan's uncle, Dr. Yatinder Khanna's much developed time machine finally works. Sana expresses her wish to travel ahead in time to Mumbai in the future. We land in Mumbai 2050 in the time machine... along with Uncle Yatinder, Rahul, and Thea (Sana's younger brother and sister). Flying cars, 200-story buildings, robots and sky rails have changed the very face of Mumbai. Through a series of twists and turns, the time traveler Karan finds himself separating from his love. QT, a friendly femme robot, and Boo, a small robotic teddy bear play their distinct roles in bringing their love story together but soon find themselves under the threat of the demi-god of the future, Dr. Hoshi. Will Karan be able to overcome the threat of Dr. Hoshi and win his love and travel back in time?

Living a bleak existence at a London orphanage, 12-year-old Peter finds himself whisked away to the fantastical world of Neverland. Adventure awaits as he meets new friend James Hook and the warrior Tiger Lily. They must band together to save Neverland from the ruthless pirate Blackbeard. Along the way, the rebellious and mischievous boy discovers his true destiny, becoming the hero forever known as Peter Pan.

Dorothy wakes up in post-tornado Kansas, only to be whisked back to Oz to try to save her old friends the Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tin Man and Glinda from a devious new villain, the Jester. Wiser the owl, Marshal Mallow, China Princess and Tugg the tugboat join Dorothy on her latest magical journey through the colorful landscape of Oz to restore order and happiness to Emerald City.

They couldn't be more different, the members of the trio that allies in the fight against an Ancient Ice Ghost (AIG): Tom, an easily scared boy, Hetty, a professional ghosthunter and the loveable, but pretty slimy Hugo - a ghost. Will the team manage to save their town from the next ice age?

This time around Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their pesky cousin Eustace Scrubb find themselves swallowed into a painting and on to a fantastic Narnian ship headed for the very edges of the world.

In a world where people collect pocket-size monsters (Pokémon) to do battle, a boy comes across an intelligent monster who seeks to be a detective.

Eight years after the third film, the OSS has become the world's top spy agency, while the Spy Kids department has since become defunct. A retired spy Marissa (Jessica Alba) is thrown back into the action along with her stepchildren when a maniacal Timekeeper (Jeremy Piven) attempts to take over the world. In order to save the world, Rebecca (Rowan Blanchard) and Cecil (Mason Cook) must team up with their hated stepmother. Carmen and Juni have since also grown up and will provide gadgets to them.

It's Schluufy's birthday, and the Oogieloves (Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie), along with their friends J. Edgar, Windy Window and Ruffy, are organizing a party. (Shh! It's a secret.) Everything is going along just perfectly until J. Edgar trips and loses the last five magical balloons in all of Lovelyloveville--OH NO! The Oogiloves set out to find the magical balloons in time to save their friend's party. Along the way, they meet some very interesting characters indeed, including Dotty Rounder (Cloris Leachman), Bobby Wobbly (Carey Elwes), Milky Marvin (Chazz Palminteri), Rosalie Rosebud (Toni Braxton) and Lola and Lero Sombero (Christopher Lloyd and Jaime Pressly). Can these new friends help them recover the magical balloons and get back to the cottage in time to celebrate Schluufy's surprise birthday?

A serial killer decides to dissect the critically panned Star Wars prequels to determine their TRUE flaws.

Immediately after his death, the victim of a car crash gets answers to every question he's ever had about his life, including the most import one of all - what did it all mean?

"Secret Society of Souptown" is an adventurous family movie that takes place in Souptown, a district in the summery city of Tartu. Four children - Mari, Sadu, Olav and Anton form a secret society to play hide-and seek games invented by Mari's grandfather, a professor at the university. When the city is attacked by a mysterious poison which turns adults into children our gang embarks on a quest for the antidote. Their path is paved with challenges bigger than any other they have seen so far. It is an adventure you cannot even imagine... Will the children find the antidote in time to save their loved ones.

When the Sultan's first born is taken by an evil sorcerer, Sinbad is tasked with traveling to a desert of magic and creatures to save her.

Friends terrorized by a gang of street hooligans run the risk of spending the entire summer being locked up in their backyard. But thanks to their resourcefulness, mutual assistance and the support of the local population, they manage to get into their hands a serious “biological weapon”.

Derek and Hansel are modelling again when an opposing company attempts to take them out from the business.

For years, old wood carver Mr. Meacham has delighted local children with his tales of the fierce dragon that resides deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. To his daughter, Grace, who works as a forest ranger, these stories are little more than tall tales... until she meets Pete, a mysterious 10-year-old with no family and no home who claims to live in the woods with a giant, green dragon named Elliott. And from Pete's descriptions, Elliott seems remarkably similar to the dragon from Mr. Meacham's stories. With the help of Natalie, an 11-year-old girl whose father Jack owns the local lumber mill, Grace sets out to determine where Pete came from, where he belongs, and the truth about this dragon.

Seven-year-old Johannes Blom gets blown away when he discovers a little man in the kitchen cupboard, hidden behind the peanut butter jar. He’s even more astonished when he realizes that this little man, ‘Wiplala’, has magical powers. When Wiplala accidentally transforms the Blom family to little people, the adventure begins. Will they ever go back to normal-sized people?

Pia's life, a girl from a small German town, changes when surprisingly, finds in her garden a huge black monster. She soon discovers that the mysterious creature, which called Yoko, is actually a kind yeti spiritually protecting animals and children worldwide. Yoko is constantly showing his friends Pia and their unique qualities, but children are not the only ones who want the Yeti. Its great value calls attention to two hunters who want to take advantage of the yeti.

The Galactic Patrol is back - but they've lost Deputy Rod Allbright's body. It's been stolen by B'KR, the most fiendish villain in the galaxy, which leaves Rod's mind sharing one body with his annoying cousin Elspeth. Stranded on a mysterious alien planet, our young heroes embark on a mission to find the only being who can stop B'KR once and for all, the legendary time-strider himself; Art Allbright - who also happens to be Rod's dad. The Galactic Patrol's high-flying adventures continue in this thrilling second film based on the global best-selling book series from acclaimed author Bruce Coville and Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing. This rip-roaring sequel draws the crew of the Good Ship Ferkel into a web of alien plots that will test their courage to the utmost -- and ultimately bring them face-to-face with one of the galaxy's most guarded secrets.

When alien invaders capture Earth's superheroes, their kids must learn to work together to save their parents - and the planet.

A mockumentary that chronicles the prevalence of doping in the world of professional cycling.

A teenager finds himself transported to an island where he must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures intent on destroying them.

Dr. Middling is a dentist longing for adventure, while his "saucy wench" of an assistant tries to take him out for drinks. He finally finds his adventure when a pirate named Jasper Crow comes complaining of tooth pain. Afraid of needles, Dr. Middling resorts to irrational measures to help ease the pain. After he completes his job, Crow leaves, leaving Dr. Middling yearning of adventure satisfied and decides to go out for drinks- only to find out he has a lot more patients to treat.

When teenagers JOSH (Louis Corbett) and LING (Li Lin Jin) join their respective parents, CHRIS (Sam Neill) and Dr LI (Wang Ji) on an archaeological dig in China they encounter something trapped beneath a temple beyond their wildest imagination. A real live Chinese dragon. Two thousand years earlier, to defend his kingdom, the dragon lent an emperor his all powerful pearl. Instead of being returned, the pearl was buried with the emperor beneath his palace, and helpless without its source of power the dragon has remained entombed ever since.

A lovestruck, lounge-singing darts champion finds his prayers are answered -- literally -- when he mysteriously receives a box of love-inducing darts.

Free Hugs captures the "rock bottom" moment of post-breakup wallowing, when friends lose their patience, and the pitiless world moves on without you. We follow the hilariously bitter Billie (Jaclyn Jonet) as she attempts to find catharsis through comfort food (and wine), sawing her belongings in half and attacking a particularly meaningful local monument. Ultimately Billie must slam into the harsh reality of heartbreak before she can understand that sometimes the purest form of love is a free hug from a stranger.

Brian Dundee tries to locate his father, Crocodile Dundee, in the Australian Outback.

Ivan is a 400-pound silverback gorilla who shares a communal habitat in a suburban shopping mall with Stella the elephant, Bob the dog, and various other animals. He has few memories of the jungle where he was captured, but when a baby elephant named Ruby arrives, it touches something deep within him. Ruby is recently separated from her family in the wild, which causes him to question his life, where he comes from and where he ultimately wants to be.

Family adventure based on Mary Norton's classic children's books about a race of tiny people who live under the floorboards, resourcefully surviving by borrowing bits and pieces from the large residents who dwell above. After being discovered by 'human beans', borrower Arrietty and her parents are forced to leave their home while attempting to evade the clutches of obsessive scientist Professor Mildeye.

Yet another variation on Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court." Here, a computer malfunction causes a science researcher to be sent back in time with her laptop, which she uses to amaze the court.

At Kinetech Labs, an inventor named Allan Topher designs a robot for search and rescue, but when he finds out that the robot will be used for military purposes, he programs the robot to flee. The robot escapes but is damaged in the process. It is discovered by 12-year-old Henry Keller, who fixes it and names it Cody. The robot does not remember its past, and Henry and Cody develop a friendship. Eventually, Kinetech and the inventor find Cody and bring the robot back to the laboratories. The inventor feels guilty for taking Cody away, so he returns the robot to Henry. The inventor meets Henry's mother, Joanna, in the process and falls in love. Kinetech wants the robot back, so it kidnaps the inventor and Joanna. Henry and Cody embark to save them and to bring down Kinetech.