We've seen the commercials on television. Starring Jeff Daniels, Anna Paquin, and about 18 geese.
"Fly Away Home." It's just the kind of story that can make our hearts soar. With ease, director Carroll Ballard ("The Black Stallion") captures the exquisite beauty of the Ontario countryside - its rolling valleys, tall, wispy grass and its animals - weaving it through a heartwarming tale of a family in need of healing.
Thirteen-year-old Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) wakes up in a hospital bed, groggy, with her father Thomas (Jeff Daniels) at her side. Within minutes, she knows that her mother did not survive the car accident - one that we, seconds earlier, had witnessed in surreal slow motion.
All of a sudden, it's one month later, and Amy must leave Australia, her native country, to join her father in Ontario, Canada, where he spends his time with his eccentric inventions and his red-headed girlfriend, Susan (Dana Delaney).
Right from the start, we know Amy is not happy with the new life she is forced to accept. Her relationship with her father is awkward and at a standstill. In one exchange, she tells him: "I'm not a baby. You don't have to hold my hand." Amy wants desperately to be left alone to stumble upon her new life by herself.
One day, the young girl discovers a nest of orphaned goose eggs in the grass around her father's farm. In an attempt to care for them, she creates a makeshift incubator, and (because geese imprint on whoever they see first) Amy becomes the Mother Goose.
A problem arises, however. Amy's geese have not learned to fly and have no mother to show them where to migrate south. In a brainstorm, Thomas suggests that they use his dinky planes (one of his many wonderful inventions) to conduct an experiment: He'll teach Amy to fly, and they will both lead the way to North Carolina, which will become a winter home for the geese.
During the film, father and daughter battle bad weather, an anal-retentive wildlife officer and government hassles. But their mutual goal helps them piece together their broken family and build on the father / daughter relationship that they had never before known.
With its uplifting yet tidy storyline, "Fly Away Home" proves to be more than slow-moving at times. But just as we cross the boundary from minor boredom to get-me-outa-this-theater, some combination of Mark Isham's music, the scenery and a heart-fluttering, goose-bumpy moment draws us back in.
Amy, with a child's wide, innocent eyes, peers into her sock drawer, watching her eggs hatch. The camera sweeps through the drawer, and we absorb every detail - the delicate scarf cradling each egg, the geese fighting their way into the world. We have the pleasure of seeing all this through the eyes of a child.
We watch Amy learn to fly for the first time. She takes off in a hang glider ... only to crash in the grass moments later. We see a loving father race after her, tearing and praying that she's OK. It's moments like these that compensate for the dull ones.
Unbeknownst to many audience members, "Fly Away Home" is based on the experiment of Bill Lishman, a Canadian artist who actually did teach geese to fly. Jeff Daniels, in town for a private screening of his film at the Michigan Theater last week, said it best: "This is a true story ... or, at least the geese part is. Hollywood made up the rest." And if we take the movie for what it's worth, we can say that Hollywood did a good job.
Jeff Daniels is perfect as the eccentric father who really doesn't have much of a clue as to how to raise a daughter. We sympathize with him, easily see his love for Amy and watch as their newly-found relationship unfolds and evolves.
Anna Paquin ("The Piano") also does a beautiful job with her portrayal of young Amy. We fall in love with her from the start - just as much as the geese themselves do. As an audience, we feel for her as well, as she struggles to find her happiness in a strange new world.
Even in all its breathtaking beauty, "Fly Away Home" does have its rough spots - mainly, in its plot. For instance, some of the obstacles that Amy and her father must overcome seem contrived. Thomas goes crazy when the anal wildlife officer tries to clip his geese's wings. We're thinking: Okay, calm down buddy. How old are you?
Still, after absorbing some of the film's finer aspects, we are left satisfied with "Fly Away Home"'s light-as-a-feather tale. A tidy Hollywood happy ending succeeds in keeping our spirits soaring even much higher than the geese that inspired the story.
"Dumb and Dumber"'s Jeff Daniels stars in "Fly Away Home."