On a Wing and a Prayer

This movie comes really close to being good, but falls short because of the addition of pointless and annoying characters. Characters that have no value in driving the storyline or improving the plot in any way.

I wanted to enjoy this movie, it's based upon a true story that is amazing on its own, and really doesn't need any "help" or additions to the story to make it more interesting to viewers.

For some reason, movie studios love placing kids in pointless roles in movies. It happens way too much and only serves to break up the tension and lowers the quality of the movie. Children overreacting and being dramatic in a true story like this isn't funny, comedic, or cute, it's just infuriating and annoying.

I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that the movie could have easily been improved with some good editing. If the filler scenes with the two "aviation enthusiasts" children were removed, and instead we simply had a few more scenes with the interactions between the aircraft and the aircraft tower, it would make for a much more enjoyable watch.

...but I couldn't. The first part of the movie was just tedious. I know it was about building up the family context, but it was tedious. There were several points where I almost gave up on the movie. The blonde daughter was very annoying. There was a point where she had to grab an epi pen out of a backpack in the cargo hold, and instead of her unfastening the webbing in the cargo hold, for what seemed like a long time we had to see her panicking as she tried to frantically reach through the webbing to feel for the backpack. All I could think was "how stupid of a daughter did this guy have?" Even my 10yo son would've tried to unhook the strapping. On the plus side, it's a family friendly movie and maybe a preteen or younger might find the movie entertaining. Most adults would probably not get past the mediocre acting and plot development.

As a hobbyist pilot, if there's an airplane movie, I'm watching it: Positives: 1) Good family movie that is not afraid to use faith. 2) it's got cute Heather Graham who did not sell herself to the monster Harvey Weinstein. 3) Heather praying the Lord's Prayer (I'm not religious, but the way this nation is heading to, I'm becoming more of faith).

Negatives: 1) Lacking serious aviation technical advice. Vertical speed indicator's showing a gradual descend, yet the altimeter is climbing like a rocket, and many others. 2) Like some have mentioned, annoying kids.

I do fly many Angel Flights in South FL, hopefully I'll hear Doug over the radio one day.

This movie which is based on a true story could have been so much better. Dennis Quaid did a fine job in his performance and those who portrayed his family did an ok job. My major complaint is why did Hollywood need to make out two preteen kids (who was not involved in the real event) act like they are geniuses. I found this addition very distracting and insulting to have two kids listening to air traffic controllers and trying to explain what is happening to each other and us the audience. This part was totally fictionalized and unnecessary. Other than it was on ok family movie. Could have been better though.

Sometimes less can be more. They went way too over the top with this movie. They didn't need all the extra stuff, it was dramatic enough to begin with. They didn't need kids explaining everything. They didn't need to create any additional stressful situations on the plane itself when it was already stressful enough anyways. They could have simply told the story exactly as it happened and the movie would have been better for it. Sometimes I can understand movies really hyping things up, but this was never going to be an action movie and they tried to turn it into one, which didn't work out well, in my opinion.

If you want to actually watch this as it happened, there's a Youtube video about it on the channel FS Mania titled "PILOT DIES, Passenger Lands King Air". It recreates the entire incident in Microsoft Flight Simulator while using the actual transmissions from the incident. It's about 10x better than this movie is, while also only taking up about 40 minutes. Just watch that instead. Save yourself some time and watch a better video while you're doing it.