Fly Away Home

There are scenes in this movie that give you well, goose bumps, that make you proud to live on the same planet with creatures so exquisitely, instinctively and spiritually lovely. [13 Sep 1996]

While Winged Migration asks the audience to empathize with birds, Fly Away Home asks us to take a closer look at the people who love them, and to understand what gives their lives meaning. Read full review

With an incredible eye for nature, both its landscape and its particulars, and a wonderful script, Ballard has crafted a movie that dignifies the lowly goose and tells a remarkable story about family at the same time. [13 Sep 1996, p.3E]

An untreacly family film is a true rare bird. [13 Sep 1996]

What I will remember is the photography, and the bliss (just this side of madness) with which the Jeff Daniels character invents his foolhardy schemes. Read full review

Fly Away Home" is directed by Carroll Ballard, who made "The Black Stallion" and "Never Cry Wolf." In other words, it was directed by a filmmaker with talent, taste and subtlety, working from an understated script by Robert Rodat and Vince McKewin. Read full review

It's a genuine delight and a definite thumbs aloft for kids of about six upwards. Read full review

An animal, kid and family picture of the first order, "Fly Away Home" marks an impressive return to form for Carroll Ballard, his best work since "The Black Stallion" 17 years ago. Read full review

Uplifting yet speckled with a flinty perspective on life, Fly Away Home is a terrific PG family film, one that will appeal to grown-ups as well as kids. [03 Sep 1996]

What's special about Fly Away Home is the delicate yet unsentimental way that Ballard approaches the material. Working from a straightforward script by Robert Rodat and Vince McKewin, he seems to let the story tell itself. [13 Sep 1996, p.23]

Although developing from a small, insightful, character-based beginning to a more Hollywood-friendly feel-good climax, this intelligent, atmospheric, and well-crafted family movie seldom loses its way. Read full review

Rekindling the delicacy and invigorating naturalness he brought to "The Black Stallion," and again helped immensely by the radiant cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, Ballard turns a potentially treacly children's film into an exhilarating '90s fable. Read full review

As Amy, Anna Paquin proves again what an expressive, soulful actress she is, and Daniels' madcap dad is a winning study in hippy ingenuity and indefatigability. Read full review

Nobody does a better job of putting animals and people in the same movie than Carroll Ballard, and he does it again, humanely as ever, in Fly Away Home. [13 Sep 1996, p.D8]

What makes "Fly Away Home" worth seeing is Ballard and Deschanel's beguiling imagery: the geese devotedly following Paquin around the farm as she tries to speak their language; a wry shot of Kinney dozing off in front of a televised wrestling match as Amy sneaks off to tend her eggs; and those spectacular flying episodes, which are quite unlike anything else on the horizon. [13 Sep 1996]

The movie takes countless liberties, including the addition of the 13-year-old girl. But authenticity doesn't matter much; we're watching a fairy tale about trust, maturity and beating the odds, and those plot threads are woven tightly together. [13 Sep 1996, p.6E]

Yes, the movie gets off the ground when it gets off the ground, and who better to provide the lift than director Carroll Ballard. [13 Sep 1996, p.C1]

Fly Away Home falls a little short of classic status, but it is easily one of the more appealing family films to come flying this way in quite some time. [13 Sep 1996, p.03]

Nature specialist Carroll Ballard directed this eye-dazzling family film, which has superb airborne cinematography to compensate for some soggy spots in the story. [13 Sep 1996, p.13]

As a family film, Fly Away Home has something for members of every temperament and age group: adventure, pathos, technical detail about the design of the aircraft, cute animals, and human drama. Read full review

A solid family movie, "Fly Away Home" is a constant feast for the eyes, with rich photography by Caleb Deschanel. Read full review

Ballard, working from a screenplay by Robert Rodat and Vince McKewin, lets the melancholy hang in the air with a few too many poetic shots of the lonely girl. But as Thomas teaches Amy how to spread her wings, any lacy sentimentality (as well as the jarring tree-hugger subplot about meanie land developers) falls away, revealing the soaring beauty of the flying sequences. Read full review

This is family entertainment at its best: Intelligent and surprisingly unsentimental. And anyone who doesn't fall in love with those goslings has a heart of stone. Read full review

Ballard makes a simple, deeply affecting emotional associations between Amy, her father, the geese, and the absent mothers and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel bathes the action in an appropriately magisterial beauty. Read full review

By refusing to be cheap or insincere, "Fly Away Home" allows us to enjoy our emotions without feeling we've been criminally manipulated. [13 Sep 1996, p.F1]

No better children's film has appeared all year, but my bet is it'll be the grown-ups, not the kids, who come away with a lump in the throat. Read full review

From gawky, gladdening parades across the grasslands to breathtaking aerial acrobatics, Fly Away Home is a feast for the soul and for the eye. Read full review

One part beautiful fable, one part cheesy "Rocky" clone, "Fly Away Home" is nonetheless a notch above most flimsy Hollywood movies made primarily for children. [13 Sep 1996, p.44]