Fly Away Home

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	1
Running Time	103 minutes	Commentary Tracks	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Other Extras	None
Region	4
Distributor	Columbia Tristar
RRP	$34.95

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (MPEG 5.1) English (Dolby Digital 5.1) English (MPEG 2.0)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English  Polish Czech Hungarian Cantonese Italian Greek Hebrew

    The movie opens with Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) and her mother driving in the rain at night in New Zealand. Their car crashes and Amy's mother is killed. Amy's parents have been separated for some time, so Amy's father, Thomas (Jeff Daniels) comes from Canada to be with Amy. They return to the Canadian wilderness, where Amy doesn't quite fit in. Not only that, but she takes an instant dislike to her father's girlfriend, Susan Barnes (Dana Delaney). This situation eventually resolves.

    One day, the land around their home is cleared illegally to make way for a residential development. Amy discovers a clutch of goose eggs, apparently abandoned by their mother as a result of the commotion, and she adopts them as her own. The eggs hatch, and the hatchlings become attached to Amy as their surrogate mother.

    A parks and wildlife officer is consulted about the birds, and how to look after them, but he wants to clip their wings so that they cannot fly. Amy and her father are horrifed by this. They realize that the only way the geese are going to survive is if they are taught to fly and to migrate south for the winter. The geese are taught to fly behind Amy in an ultralight plane, and plans are made for their migration.

    Unfortunately, just before their departure, the parks and wildlife officer confiscates the birds, but they are liberated, and the great migratory journey is under way. Along the way we encounter the air force, the media, shooters, clouds, and we survive a plane crash until the final confrontation between conservationists and developers at the birds' eventual resting place.

    At first sight, I was concerned that this movie would be overly corny and sappy. However, the film's director (Carroll Ballard) never allows this to happen, even though this would be very easy to do with a movie like this. The only time I felt the movie strayed slightly into the farcical was when the air force scrambled some fighter jets to intercept the geese, but this moment quickly passed. It is a cliché to say this, and it immediately makes you think less of the movie which is a pity, but this movie is inspirational in the true sense of the word.

    The cinematography of this movie is absolutely stunning with gorgeous panoramas and vivid colours. In fact, I think the cinematography in this movie is even more stunning than the cinematography of Legends Of The Fall.

Video

    The transfer was crystal clear and razor sharp at almost all times. There were a very few scenes, some involving wide expanses of sky and some involving fog which were a little grainy, but 99% of this movie is breathtakingly clear. Shadow detail was marvellous, with no low level noise apparent. Significant portions of this movie take place in low lighting conditions, and the amount of detail in the picture during these scenes is marvellous.

    The colour was magnificently rendered in this transfer. In particular, bright colours were vibrant and vivid, and skin tones were absolutely spot-on with no over or undersaturation at all at any time. Some of the shots of the geese flying were just wonderful to behold.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. No film-to-video artefacts were seen. This is another disc with several scenes which you would expect to see aliasing in but which was free of these artefacts. Very few film artefacts were apparent, but the odd fleck here and there was seen.

    I would have given this video transfer a reference rating except for the very few minor problems mentioned above, and I am probably being a little harsh by doing this.

Audio

    Dialogue was always perfectly clear and intelligible, and in fact this is the clearest dialogue I have had the pleasure of listening to in a long time.

    The musical score was often present, and it was a beautiful score, often haunting, sometimes lilting, sometimes uplifting. The score was written by Mark Isham, someone I am not familiar with.

     The surround channels were used for music, for ambience and for the occasional special effect. The surrounds are active almost all of the time, particularly in outdoor scenes, where you are superbly placed in the centre of the soundfield. Whilst there are not many bangs, crashes or wallops in the surrounds, the fact that they place you in the middle of the action at all times with subtle ambience is noteworthy - you don't need to have loud noises in the rear for the surrounds to be effective.

    The .1 channel was used to enhance the music and for the odd loud noise. It only had a light workout during this movie, but it was very effectively used in the scenes where it was appropriate for it to be used.

    The video quality is very very close to reference quality with only rare and trivial problems with the transfer to complain about. The cinematography is stunning, and the disc is worth viewing for this alone.

    The audio quality is reference quality. A wonderful, enveloping soundfield is created by the soundtrack.

    All in all, this was a wonderful DVD to experience.

Video
Audio
Extras	nil
Plot
Overall

Michael Demtschyna
30th November 1998