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FLY AWAY HOME
FLY AWAY HOME (A-2, PG): This is director Carroll Ballard’s girl-and-her-geese film, to form a superb triptych with his boy-and-his-horse epic The Black Stallion and man-bonds-with-wolf adventure Never Cry Wolf. Sheer beauty makes up for any lack of credibility.
After her mother is killed in a car crash, 13-year-old Amy (Anna Paquin) goes to rural Ontario to live with her estranged father (Jeff Daniels). He’s soaring around the countryside in a one-man homemade glider and battling the developers encroaching on a nearby wilderness area. The two are brought together when Amy rescues a clutch of wild goose eggs, and Dad helps her to teach the goslings how to be genuine Canada geese.
Part of being a goose, of course, involves flying south for the winter, and the characters are soon caught up in training the birds to follow two motorized, goose-shaped versions of Dad’s planes to North Carolina. The climax is the trip itself-a mix of beauty, comedy and suspense-as the fragile little gaggle encounters everything from American fighter jets to Baltimore skyscrapers.
This is definitely a conservationist’s movie: The bad guys have goose-wing clippers and bulldozers. There’s a high cuteness factor: The goslings are adorable and young Paquin, coiffed in a variety of Mom’s retro hats, isn’t far behind. But Ballard and cameraman Caleb Deschanel wash us in irresistible images. Family values flourish; well-crafted entertainment for kids, moms and dads.
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