Fly Away Home Details

great childrens film

didn't manage to see this myself , it was delivered at the beginning of half term; kids wanted to see it 3 times, what more can I say . even my 3 yr old sat though the whole of it!

[Highly rated reviewer]

If you are male and value your dignity, do not watch this film with company

I am a relentlessly cold, ugly, hard, callous, perhaps even cruel man. I have checked with numerous doctors and my heart is indeed made of stone. Bambi, Schindlers List and Hotel Rwanda all elicited no response from me except a hollow, bitter laugh. I even managed to grab my kleenex, crack my knuckles and have a quick 'read of the diary of anne frank' while genuinely reading the Diary of Anne Frank. I don't even feel that guilty about that woman I killed. I cannot remember the last time I cried, but it must be more than 20 years. In that time, my mother died. Long years of illness, her 50 year old body invaded by cancer as black and inexorable as Hitler's armies sweeping across Europe, unable to speak because of a tube in her throat, the indignity, the occasionally glimpses of sheer atavistic terror in her eyes, the blood, the mucus, my own complete inability to provide her with any reassurance that it had meant something because I myself did not believe it, her last desperate, heartbreakingly pitiable scrabbling around for some shred of consolation before her lonely, grubby end, my organising her pointless and pathetic little funeral, and not once did I cry a single tear. Never even close.

So why then, does this film about a daffy little kiwi girl and her flock of goddamn geese make me throw a big rubbery one, every time? And I don't mean one stoic, manly little tear that sprigs in the corner of my eye to be wiped away by a dignified hand. I mean I wail like an ambulance siren. I blub like an emotionally unstable x-factor contestant who has just found out they have only seconds to live. I sob like that lispy little 6 year old girl after she watched me stamp her puppy to death because it had given me a dirty look.

I have a friend who says that air-conditioning is his kryptonite. This film is mine. (That and writing film reviews, which will be obvious to you if you've read this far). But she really loved those geese!

I refrain from using the word magical, because my soul is dead, but this film is not a million miles away. The aforementioned little kiwi girl is played by Anna Paquin, who is superb. Also a bit weird to see her when she was a kid now that she's a bona fide scorcher, but I don't think you can be done for being a paedo retroactively, and it's not like I want to give her one when she was a kid, I'd just like to give her one now (and if she's reading this review and is up for it, and I can't see why she wouldn't be or shouldn't be, any evening is good for me except thursdays and fridays). Her dad is played by Jeff Daniels, who is an eccentric inventor, who we know will find his paternal instinct and be a good dad because he HAS A BEARD. The universal film-makers mark of the pater or the Russian, n'est pas?

Fly little girl with your geese, fly! Soar like a leaf on the wind!