Fly Away Home (1996)
[9]
Admittedly, I'm a bird fan, but don't let the marketing fool you. This is not just a kid's movie -- it's an incredibly moving, gorgeously made film based on an inspirational true story, and I blubber every time I see it. After losing her mother, young Amy (Oscar winner Anna Paquin, The Piano, True Blood) goes to live with her eccentric inventor father (Jeff Daniels). They're estranged from one another, but they bond over a common cause: a gaggle of orphaned geese. The hatchlings imprint on Anna, believing she is their mother. Since the geese can't learn their migratory path unless their mother teaches them, Dad builds a pair of ultra-light planes so he and Amy can lead the geese on an amazing journey to their winter grounds.
Director Carroll Ballard (The Black Stallion) steers clear of sentimentality in a story doesn’t need any emotional embellishment. Daniels and Paquin give great performances and Caleb Deschanel’s Oscar-nominated cinematography is breathtaking. Mark Isham’s score is one of the best of the 90s, and Mary Chapin Carpenter provides a haunting theme song that plays majestically over the movie’s very emotional finale. Fly Away Home even has a few thrills. I especially love the sequence where the ultra-lights emerge out of a thick fog into a city full of skyscrapers. The shots of people on the street and inside buildings looking up and out at this little girl leading a flock of geese give me… well, goose bumps. You just don’t see very many family films of this caliber.
With Dana Delaney.
