Fly Away Home




I do like the geese!

feather pillow soft

After going through a car accident that claims her mother, Amy (Anna Paquin) is taken from New Zealand back to Canada by her estranged father (Jeff Daniels). Not having a good relationship with him to begin with, her disposition towards her situation continues to sink due to his slightly less than mainstream behavior. But that all changes when Amy finds and raises a batch of geese from eggs to goosehood, which helps to bring her closer to her father, a happy outlook on life, and a purdy ending.

It's okay to knock a little on family movies like this since they give no reason not to. Fly Away Home does all right by what it shoots for, but not much else. That's bottom line; you can stop reading right here and save yourself an extra minute. Carroll Barnard brings a subdued atmosphere to just about everything, especially in the characters and their performances. That's not to say that the movie doesn't occasionally try for a little humor and all that other stuff. 'Cause it does. It is hard to say though, who has the bigger part through the movie, the father or the daughter; the answer is probably nestled somewhere between issues of star clout and necessity. Anyway, that relationship forms a decent base for everything, but it doesn't do anything spectacular. A little bit more probing into it would've been nice. The geese themselves are cute. There's no getting around that. And it's a genuinely inspiring story, especially when the migration problems factor in.

Hot off of stealing an Oscar right from underneath the collective noses of several far more experienced actresses, Anna Paquin gives a slightly less demanding performance. She spends most of the film brooding in limited thirteen year-old girl fashion, though without much focus. Still, she's cute and completely believable as a little girl in Amy's circumstances. Jeff Daniels is there to bring more of a rounded presence, though his part largely disappoints since there's not much for him to do outside of being the slightly unorthodox yet caring father. The rest of the cast fills out the available stereotypical parts.

On another note, Mary Chapin Carpenter's "10,000 Miles" theme is rather nice.



-The Gnome