Fly Away Home

Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) survives a car crash where her mother is killed. She leaves New Zealand to live with her father Thomas (Jeff Daniels) in his ramshackle house in Ontario, Canada. She has no memories of her Canadian home and feels isolated. He's an eccentric inventor artist who flies his homemade glider. Susan Barnes (Dana Delany) is his girlfriend. After a land developer tears down some trees, Amy finds an abandoned nest of goose eggs. She raises the chicks but when the time comes, she has to teach them to fly south.

This is a fine family movie. Anna Paquin is adorable and so are the chicks. The story is gentle feel good. Jeff Daniels is great as the eccentric dad. There is a real free feeling that comes from watching people run around with these geese. There is a minor drama with a wildlife officer and a main one with a land developer. In the end, the drama isn't too high but it's good for the whole family.

Following Toy Story comes Fly Away Home, another string to the increasingly large bow of children's films that adults can also enjoy. The story follows Amy, a 13-year-old New Zealand girl who is forced to live with her estranged father in Canada following a car crash that kills her mother. Amy becomes increasingly withdrawn and upset until she finds a collection of similarly orphaned goslings that she takes care of, nurturing them until they are ready to migrate to the southern United States.

The film could easily have fallen into the sappy ‘family film' category. However, it never lets itself, choosing to concentrate more on characters than moments. Amy's character, played with breathtaking maturity by Anna Paquin, is better developed and more complex than characters in most films aimed at adults. The supporting cast also flesh out their strong characters to make the whole film much more believable.

The cinematography is beautiful, the dusky-autumnal scenes are captured in an explosion of reds and yellows and oranges that seem to wash over you time and time again, and the final flight sequence is a wonderful closing to an incredibly refreshing film.

This movie has something thats missing in a lot of other movies. It has a soul, and a belief in good.

Its believable, beautiful and smooth. Its cast shows that they´re as good as any renowned "great" actor of the day, and the story is quite light...yet its something strangely moving about it.

A daughter that looses her mother, which leads her to take care of doomed geese. And even though the cute-scale is quite high, the movie still holds you cause of its fine acting and soulful goodness.

This is a great movie for all ages. Its nice shooted, really nice telled, and good acted.

Its a given choice for the whole family. 9/10!

Ps. The soundtrack is also very nice. Suttle, clean and memorable.

I got sucked into a movie on the satellite dish the other day, 'Fly Away Home.' It's a story about a young motherless girl (Amy) who rescues some wild goose eggs and basically becomes their mother. The story evolves as the goslings grow into young adult birds ready to fly south. Since they never had parents the geese haven't learned to fly. The girl's dad thinks he can get them to fly by following him in his ultra-light. But they will only follow Amy. So dad teaches her to fly. Soon the geese are flying. Next, dad and Amy hatch a plot to fly south and have the geese follow them. We know this actually happened when 2 scientists did something similar.

One of the reasons I was sucked into this wonderful family movie was the photography. It is National Geographic quality. In fact I was so impressed with the cinematography that I had to look up who did it: Caleb Deschanel. The setting, a farm in Southern Ontario, allowed him to become intimate with the geese and the natural setting. Another reason I couldn't stop watching the movie was the stunning performance by Anna Paquin, the 16-year old girl who played Amy. I remembered her from the movie, 'Piano.' She played Flora, the daughter of Holly Hunter. I'm sure they picked Paquin to do that part because of her speaking ability. Holly Hunter played the part of Ada, a woman who couldn't talk. She communicated with sign language through her daughter. Paquin was so good in her part that she won the Oscar, quite a feat for an 11-year old.

The story, 'Fly Away Home' is touching because she's not the kind of Hollywood-trained child actor you find in most movies. A surprising thing happened as I watched Amy and her geese. I could sense a startling serenity from her as the bond had developed between them. I wondered how she could manage that. She was only a 16-year old actress then but she conveyed a mothering instinct that goes back to the ageless beginnings of life on this planet. When the goslings were following her around, much of the photography was from ground level. Later when they were all flying, the photography was right there in the flying formation. You were seeing the birds, in flight, right next to you. The beauty of motion was unbelievable. I thought, 'How could anyone shoot these creatures?' There is beauty in seeing them fly. There is beauty in seeing them in their habitat. But the overwhelming beauty is in their living. They deserved that life. It made me think of this sad planet and the billions of creatures that have died because of the human race. Here was a story that went against the slaughter. When Amy and her birds arrived at their destination in Chesapeake Bay I had misty eyes.

So I'm a soft touch.

Those three are the keys to this film's secrets of success. The excellent acting performances by both Jeff Daniels and Oscar winner Anna Paquin make a very good chemistry between the two also. Paquin's character here was perhaps more complex and challenging than "The Piano". The no-nonsense smart script makes the film not restricted to the 'family' film category. The cinematography was nominated for Oscar and one can easily see why. The wildlife scenes can easily be compared to the superior programs we see on National Geographic etc. The end sequence was brilliantly filmed and is a treat to the eyes. In short, "Fly Away Home" is indeed a refreshing experience.