This little girl, Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) hasn't lived with her father, Thomas Alden (Jeff Daniels) for ten years and doesn't remember much at all about him or her old home in Canada. Her mom had left him, had taken Amy and moved to New Zealand. Tom Alden is an very eccentric, yet dedicated artist who keeps himself busy with his creative, if hair-brained art projects. Now, fate has intervened and Tom has to find a way to be the father he never was before. Making it more difficult for him is the fact that Amy is growing up and is not a baby girl anymore and the fact that he has to introduce her to Susan Barnes (Dana Delany), his current girlfriend who "sometimes" lives in the house with him. Family tension ensues.
Tom Alden is a bit of a "tree-hugger" and is embroiled in an ongoing fight against a land developer who wants to "pave paradise to put up a parking lot" and it seems that the developer is perfectly willing to start work before the permits are approved. Amy finds an abandoned nest in a tree knocked down by a bulldozer and decides to hatch the eggs and raise the geese. While it may sound like a humane thing to do, it causes grief for the Aldens, since domesticated migratory birds will eventually fly off, but end up getting into mischief, since they don't know a migratory path to follow, so the Canadian government requires that they be rendered flightless. Amy is aghast at the idea of "hurting" the birds, so it's up to Tom to come up with another solution. His solution is to show the geese the way to go.
As the movie progresses, the relationship between Tom, Amy and Susan develops into a supportive and nurturing family, as they all pull together to show the way for the geese to go. They must meet and overcome obstacles, from local wild game officials to the US military. They also have to find some way to fund the endeavor, since Ultralights aren't cheap. A little bonus along the way is that the area they are migrating the birds to is about to be developed by yet another heartless land developer - unless migratory birds appear by a certain set date. If Tom and Amy can get the birds to the land in time, the birds will have their own wildlife preserve.
While I found Winged Migration to be the most awesome documentary to date, with fantastic visuals, I found Fly Away Home to be a heartwarming story. If you like the human drama element of movies, you'll probably prefer Fly Away Home. If you love breathtaking visuals, you'll prefer Winged Migration. If you're interested in migratory birds, however, you'll want to run out and pick both of them up. They are the dynamic duo of migratory birds, and they are both available on Blu-ray for an absolutely beautiful high definition experience.
