Fly Away Home

1996 bird movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: After Anna Paquin's mother dies in a car crash, she moves from New Zealand to Canada in order to live with a father she barely knows. He makes his own airplanes. Her new life is dull until she finds a bunch of goose eggs, watches them hatch, and becomes a mother goose. Almost immediately, she begins rapping about anthropomorphized eggs, women who live in footwear, and people putting fingers in (more than likely proverbial) pies. A problem develops when they realize the geese will need to fly south for the winter, something that birds apparently do. Anna and her father use his flying machines to help train the birds so that they can make the trip with them.

I couldn't watch this movie without thinking of Jeff Daniels, who despite his beard in this still manages to be Jeff Daniels, and a 23-or-so-year-old Anna Paquin having sexual relations while an audience of geese squawk. I think there should be a rule, even if it's just an unwritten rule, that once you've portrayed somebody's father in one film, you are not allowed to later film a sex scene with that same person, especially if you're going to sport a beard in that second movie. The Squid and the Whale is a better movie than this one although it has far less geese, and I hope watching this doesn't ruin that one for me.

I think this movie probably had a lot to do with the resurgence of "Yo' Mama" jokes during the mid-90's. It also should get an award for "Most Annoying Song in a Movie That Doesn't Have a Giant Boat in It"--"10,000 Miles"--which manages to be exactly twice as annoying as that one-hit wonder "5,000 Miles" from Benny and Joon. I don't remember that movie much, but I remember that Proclaimers song being in the movie approximately 5,000 times. "10,000 Miles" is only in this movie twice, bookending our goose story, but it managed to make me cringe the first time and nearly commit suicide the second. I did like Jeff Daniels in this movie even though I'm not sure his character should be winning any father-of-the-year awards. Putting your daughter in a situation where she has to watch you flying around in that contraption that probably should have broken both of your legs only a few months after Mom died while using her giant cell phone and driving? Geez, that's just not right, bearded Jeff Daniels! This movie could also be a whole lot shorter because I did find myself checking my watch more than a few times. And I don't own a watch, so I was really just glancing at my arm. I really liked the stuff with the geese though. A lot of the shots of the geese in the sky following that little aircraft around were really beautiful, and even better were all the scenes with the geese running. I would have paused the movie and gone outside to imitate them, but my surgeon has told me I'm not allowed to run or jump or--especially, he noted with a wagging finger--imitate a running goose. I also really liked a touching scene featuring geese hatching which was juxtaposed with a scene where Jeff Daniels' brother is watching wrestling that made me wonder if anybody would ever really watch wrestling like that. I can picture actor Terry Kinney asking director Carroll Ballard, "So what should I be doing in this scene?" and getting an answer similar to "Oh, just watch television and try to look natural." So naturally, he goes nuts. And nobody, likely even people who just watched this movie five minutes before reading this, have any idea what I'm talking about with this "watching wrestling" scene. Just trust me--it's wonderful. Anna Paquin shows us in this how children should act in movies. She's really good. Even better is the woman who says, "I ought to blow a hole in your liver!" This is a sweet little understated family drama with an underdeveloped environmental theme, thankfully underdeveloped since things could have easily gotten a little too preachy. It would have distracted from the greatness of the scene where Terry Kinney is watching wrestling.

Recommended by Cory, who will have to tell me if he remembers the scene with the wrestling.