Fly Away Home (1996)

A great story of recovery from the profound loss of a loved one, using a metaphor in nature of teaching geese how to fly. It skillfully blends tragedy with light touches of humor and fully holds the attention of both children over the age of 10 and adults. The music by Mark Isham is especially noteworthy, particularly his blending of Mary Chapin Carpenters's "10,000 Miles" at the beginning and end. Actor Jeff Daniels brings believability to a tricky role as an estranged father adjusting to the reunion with his 13 year-old daughter. Anna Paquin is excellent in a different kind of coming of age role where she adopts an orphaned flock of geese, and in the process learns about the love of her dad. Beautifully photographed and well edited, I highly recommend it.

Fmovies: I love this movie it's a classic.You will love it. It's one of those heart toucher's.Its a great story and you can tell that there's a lot of meaning to it.I guarantee you'll love it!!It is based on a true story,its about a girl who finds 16 goose eggs and begins raising the geese after the eggs hatch.It's a sad and happy story and also a must see motion picture.

I have seen this movie at least 50 times and i am willing to watch it another million times!! I personally recommend that you see this movie. If you don't see it i can guarantee you will regret it. So go rent Fly Away Home a great 1996 film for you and your family. Enjoy watching this great film,i know I did!!

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.

Fly Away Home fmovies. The greatest challenge any of us will ever face is how to regain the ability to reach for joy after the loss of a loved one. Especially, when that loss is abrupt and occurs at an age before one has developed the capacities to manage it. That is the over-arching and powerful theme that "Fly Away Home" manages to evoke so beautifully.

It's difficult to pin-point which of the masterfully developed elements of filmmaking that make this movie such a joy to watch again and again. But, surely, it all comes down to the great story-telling ability of Mr. Carol Ballard. Everything is harnessed to tell the story (a basic element of drama surprisingly ignored these days in Hollywood) of a girl who loses her mother at a critical point in her life, and has to find a way to the rest of her life, while reeling from the trauma and uncertain of how to survive her grief.

The discovery of an abandoned nest of Canadian geese eggs is the simple overlaying metaphor that takes us on her journey. The great difference between this movie and other movies of its type is that Mr. Ballard resists the temptation to explicate the transcendent story of Amy's emotional triumph over her loss and grief. Simply put, the story is about the geese, but it's really about Amy's recovery and reconnection with her future, with her life, though there isn't one line of dialogue explaining that to the viewer. It seeps out of the story through the masterful, chekovian performances of Anna Paquin as Amy and Jeff Daniels as her father. This theme is supported with such unerring consistency in the music (Mark Isham at his most sublime), the cinematography, editing, lighting, art direction and casting. All of the casting is just perfect. Especially in the sense that none of the actors ever seem to be pulling anything out of their "bag of tricks" or doing some bit you've seen them do before. The quality of the work is such that much of the dialogue in the movie seems spontaneous and almost ad libbed. The final sequence is a thing of sublime, subtly powerful beauty that is rarely seen in movies these days. A powerful, wordless climax. Something that happens so effortlessly, because the story that comes before has been told so completely and with such skill. I cry every time I watch it.

Thank you, Carol Ballard, for this beautiful gift of compassion and belief.

Note: Did Anna Paquin actually move from little girl to adolescent in the course of making this movie, or is it more of the master magicianry of Carol Ballard and his team?

I saw this movie in theaters with my dad. When we left he said, "It makes you want to go buy a little airplane, doesn't it?" It did. I loved this movie, the music especially. I was saddened to find that they didn't release a soundtrack.

While a little folksy, it is nevertheless a funny and heartwarming story about a girl's relationship with her father in a home she is struggling to remember. Amy is trying to cope with her mother's death, then has to move halfway across the world and get used to new family members, her father's workaholic bachelor life, and her father's girlfriend. Just as she is ready to give up, she becomes the mother to fifteen abandoned Canadian geese. Her father and friends put together an elaborate scheme to teach the geese to fly and chaos ensues as Amy and her father lead their flock south for the winter. A touching story of life and love. I recommend it highly.

This is poetic, emotional, breathtaking film-making blessed with a truly inspiring Mark Isham score. The theme song, "10,000 Miles", is achingly beautiful and is first used with intuitive irony over the film's opening credit sequence.

Anna Paquin is the little girl who, with her father, Jeff Daniels, "imprints" with a flock of young geese and leads them, via homemade aircraft, to a new home thousands of miles away.

The flight sequences, which combine real flying with computer-assisted imagery over rivers, pastures and cityscapes, are flawless. They capture the awe and staggering thrill of flight without ever resorting to unnecessary, contrived stuntwork.

Daniels, not a regular face on the silver screen these days, is natural and likable as Paquin's eccentric father while Paquin once again demonstrates what a brilliant talent she is.

The narrative builds to an exciting conclusion as the film's environmental theme is amplified.

Director Ballard, who also made the striking BLACK STALLION and the stark NEVER CRY WOLF, brings acute visual economy to every scene and never allows the film's underlying theme to become preachy.

Caleb Deschanel, the film's cinematographer, gives us flawless images that frequently drop the jaw.

A major achievement in a minor key.