ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 14, 1996 TAG: 9609170014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: C-12 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
"Fly Away Home": not just another movie about a kid and an animal.
Really, this is no "Free Willy," although probably that disqualifies it from consideration for lots of people who actually liked that movie. "Fly Away Home" is everything most children's movies of its genre are not: It's so understated, it feels almost unscripted at times, and it doesn't pump up the drama at every possible opportunity. And there's no sappy music.
In short, it's the most nonformulaic, beautifully filmed movie of the "Free Willy" variety anyone is likely to make for a very long time.
Starring Anna Paquin (Holly Hunter's daughter in ``The Piano''), "Fly Away Home" is about a pre-adolescent girl who goes to live with her artist-inventor father (Jeff Daniels) after the girl's mother is killed in a car accident.
Amy isn't much interested in anything except being angry about her mother's death until one morning when a bulldozer drives off a flock of Canada geese, leaving an unattended nest full of eggs. Amy fashions a makeshift incubator out of scarves, sweaters and other soft things inside a bureau drawer, borrows a light from her dad's workshop and waits for the eggs to hatch.
When they do, the hatchlings imprint on the first thing they see, of course, and that's Amy. She plays Mother Goose, for a while, until a local game warden comes by and tells Amy and her father that domesticated geese must have their wings clipped - and proceeds to begin the job.
All that is left to be done is, well, something nearly beyond comprehension, and that is to find a way to help the birds migrate south before winter. Amy is the only thing they will follow, which leaves lots of inventing and flight lessons to be done in a very short time.
What's nice about this movie is that the script lets the relationship between Amy and her father evolve with believable subtlety. She's bugged because he never came to see her all these years she was living in New Zealand with her mother. But she's so busy mothering and he's so busy building airplanes etc., the business of mending their relationship just has to happen on its own. And that's a lot closer to the truth than most movies get, with their forced epiphanies and endless group hugs.
The other remarkable thing about the movie is its extraordinary - and I mean breathtaking - cinematography. Caleb Deschanel, who did "The Black Stallion," "Being There," "The Natural" and "The Right Stuff" among others, films the geese in flight and the surrounding countryside with something bordering on love. Apparently no one wanted to cut a single frame, so the movie is a little longer than many children's movies.
But it is completely satisfying - and guilt-free. It keeps its hands off your hankie, but you may find yourself searching for it anyway.
Fly Away Home ***1/2
A Columbia Pictures release showing at The Grandin Theatre and Salem Valley 8. Rated PG for a couple of stray cuss words, 107 minutes.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Anna Paquin is Amy in ``Fly Away Home.'' color.by CNB