mattkratz This was a great movie about courage, overcoming tragedy, and leadership. After her mother is killed in a car accident, Anna Paquin moves to Canada with her father (Jeff Daniels) after he comes to pick her up. They discover a nestful of baby geese (newly hatched!) whose mother has just died too, and they have to learn how to fly. Unfortunately, they can't learn without example, and she has to be that example. She does so by building model airplanes which she flies. She makes news by showing them the way south.I loved the aerial scenes (which were beautifully shot) and the scene where the daughter was horrified when the guy wanted to clip the chicks' wings. Everybody matures and serves as "parent figures" in the process. This was a throughly enjoyable movie and great "family fare." You will love it-guaranteed.*** out of ****

Sandol70 There is already written a lot about the story of Fly Away Home, so I'm not going to repeat my previous reviewers.I have watched the movie for the first time on German TV in 1998, by chance I zapped into the movie and stayed there, mesmerized, fascinated, enchanted by its magical richness of animal (goose) beauty and lush landscape cinematography. When the film ended, I had a lump of emotion in my throat for several days. Something changed deep inside of me, namely the perception of nature, animals, birds, specifically of wild geese. Something made click inside my mind, and since then I adore geese very deeply. Before the movie, geese were of no special interest to me, oh how ignorant I was! As a matter of fact, my love is so deep and the movie inspires me so much that I want get my own geese.Fly Away home's cinematography and script is performed what I can describe as silent, calm, quiet and serene, but never lengthy; is performed suspense-packed, but never thriller-like. Romantic, but never corny or cliché. Close to life itself and nature, but never overcharged with exaggerated eco-messages. In short, a perfect mixture of all the elements that make a movie worthwhile.The landscape shots are very idyllic (Oscar nomination on this movie for cinematography) and you begin to long and crave for a life on the country-side, away from it all, the boisterous cities and its citizens with their insignificant problems of their everyday lives. When Amy is flying in her ultralight airplane, leading the flock of geese as their surrogate mother, then you can see that the problems on land, down there, are small and trivial. That is where the geese show us how life is meant to be, more simple, more straight-forward, and peaceful. Brilliant.And the film music, the fantastic movie score composed by Mark Isham, transports all the previous mentioned qualities and features in a perfect manner. The introductory song, 10,000 Miles by Mary Chapin Carpenter and co-composed by Mark Isham, is a real tearjerker of the special kind. This song alone summarizes what this movie is all about. Love, friendship, a deep bond among humans and animals, care for nature, peace, freedom and to never give up no matter what. The track expresses Amy's love to her family, and at the same time, the love between Amy and the wild geese. I cannot watch the movie without a package of Kleenex, and I'm male and an adult, a child at heart. I believe everyone has this ability, we just have to show it more often, and this movie can help to release the inner child in all of us.There is no lukewarm love story in Fly Away Home which is a big plus, if at all, it's only presented very subtle and unobtrusive. There have to be more movies like this to prevent a shallow development in our society, but I digress. The main focus of attention is clearly on the geese, who out-act all human actors with feathery ease. Bravo! Please, more movies like this! There are, to my knowledge, only a handful of movies where script, cinematography, directing, music, dialogs and actors come together and are mixed in this perfection.I can only recommend this movie to anyone who still believes in his or her dreams and wants to realize them. This movie supports you there and makes your imaginations soar, literally. As for my part, I'm checking out where I can get geese and how I have to keep them and gain their amazing friendship, deep bond and love. One of the most fascinating movies Hollywood has ever done, Oscar-nominated, and rightly so. Big kudos. Seal of approval: Highly recommended!

Steve Skafte Fly Away Home begins on a quiet note. A car driving in the rain, mother and daughter exchanging glances. The focus goes from the windscreen to the road, and back again. Suddenly and surprisingly, violence strikes.This introduces a common theme in children's adventure stories - the loss of one or both parents. It's the very same device that Ballard used in his first film, The Black Stallion, and would use once again in Duma. He's placed no inherent value in it as a plot device, however, stating that "If you're going to have a parent die, that has to be the emotional core of the movie". And that's just what it is in this case. Amy (Anna Paquin) doesn't walk off to have fun with the animals simply forgetting her past. But, in a way, this makes the focus less on nature and more on the characters, which I'm not entirely certain was Ballard's original intention. After all, his first two pictures featured next to no human interaction, and this very thing was what made the production of "Wind" so bothersome for him.After watching Fly Away Home for the first time in nearly ten years, I was struck by its high dramatic quality. Just a week earlier, I had watched another, inferior animal film (also starring Jeff Daniels) called "Because of Winn-Dixie". I realized then just how hard it is to strike a balance between what is 'cute' and what is real. The aforementioned film dove headlong into the 'cute' side of things.At the sake of becoming too academic, this is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Caleb Deschanel's photography is effortless in appearance, giving the sensation of weightlessness far more often than in the actual flight sequences. Carroll Ballard has had great success in choosing the best people to photograph his films, and this is a great reunion for the two since their last collaboration on The Black Stallion. Mark Isham takes a totally different approach from his stunning minimalist score of Never Cry Wolf, reaching for - and sometimes - tugging at your heartstrings. In fact, the music is really quite spectacular throughout, except for a rather long and out of place interlude to "10,000 Miles" by Mary Chapin Carpenter. This would have been better suited earlier in the flight, it's current placement feeling a little off. It seems reminiscent of Linda Ronstadt's song "Winter Light" in a 1993 version of "The Secret Garden" (That film, by the way, I highly recommend for fans of Carroll Ballard).As this film progresses, it moves beyond the relationship aspect as Amy makes a discovery in the forest - geese eggs. In a way, her rescuing and raising of these orphaned chicks helps her to heal from her own loss. At its heart, this film is about loss and rebirth. This takes the story of Fly Away Home into new territory, less about the human aspect, and more about nature.All the supporting cast is good and effective (especially Terry Kinney), but Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin are the central dramatic point which the other actors center around. I've never seen a more lively or energetic performance by Daniels - it's the sort of role he's always excelled at. Paquin, on the other hand, is in a rather uncommon role for her, a simple, more unrestrained character. Without her, or another exactly suited child (of which I know none), the film's dramatic half would have collapsed in on itself. But for all the geese, the drama and the cinematography, it's the moments of quiet that stand out.As the film comes to a close, there are certain factors that bring in a lack of realism. The human and media response to the flight south seems as if borrowed from another film. This perhaps brings the story to a bit of an anti-climax. The 'evil corporate developer' subplot seems lifted from other, less imaginative films. Regardless of the slightly weak ending, perhaps no other conclusion would work better, not without a significantly longer running time.It's a delicately balanced film, and I greatly respect its director for that. There's no immature jokes, no animals being too cute, or overwrought melodrama. For the most part, it feels natural, and the characters act like real people. I appreciate that in a youth-oriented film. I've long since grown out of other movies such as Free Willy, but this film has stuck with me since childhood - and I appreciate it more now than when I first saw it as a kid myself.

rperry-17 As a film student, I naturally started to fast forward through the opening titles to get to the film. Then I had to rewind.The viewer gets kicked in the privates in the first minute of the titles. Then again two minutes later.A lot of the film is shot in the golden hours just after sunrise and just before sunset, making for some great imagery.The story is pretty adult for a family film. Familiar family issues are not candy-coated in the script.As for being believable, it is based on a true story, and yes, the amazing fridge is from a real design by the inventor at the heart of the true story.The final chapter contains simply superb flying shots worthy of National Geographic.I don't think there was any time wasted on sentimental stuff, just enough to get the point stated, then immediately move on.Worth seeking out the collectors addition for the extras that explain how close to reality the basic concept is - teaching geese to fly home.Good film, well made, great acting, superb photography.Why not a ten? The story was based too much on reality - however amazing. The photography was great, but not ground breaking.