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'Fly Away Home': Mother Goose

The people who made "The Black Stallion" have switched from horses to geese. This turns out to be a good move. "Fly Away Home" is a charming love affair between a lonely teenager and 15 of the cutest geese that ever honked their way through a movie. In light of the driving rains, hurricanes and R-rated movies pounding the Washington area, this is sweet relief for parents and kids.

Amy (Anna Paquin, the girl from "The Piano"), a 13-year-old New Zealander who has lost her mother in a car accident, is sent to a Canadian farm to live with her estranged father (Jeff Daniels). To the still-grieving Amy, life in Ontario looks distinctly unpromising: Her father’s a crackpot inventor who doesn’t make anything that works; she doesn’t click with his girlfriend (Dana Delany); and she has no friends.

Her life changes when she comes upon a nest of orphaned eggs, which has somehow survived the destructive assault of land developers’ machinery. Sheltering the eggs in a makeshift incubator, she nurtures them until they hatch. The imprinting goslings take one glance at Amy and assume she’s their parent. Now the single mother of 15 fluffy waddlers, Amy persuades her father to let them stay.

„ There are multiple problems. The geese need feeding every two hours. A wildlife officer wants to clip their wings and keep them in captivity. And if Amy manages to save her little ones from the clipper, she’s going to have to reintroduce them to instinct: That means teaching them to fly south. This is where Dad—builder of experimental airplanes—comes in.

Unlike the recent "Bogus," which has a similar plot beginning, "Fly Away Home" plays down the trauma of losing a parent. Amy’s Mom is never forgotten, but she’s never really brought up again. Besides, the movie, directed by Carroll Ballard (who also made "Never Cry Wolf" and "Wind"), is too busy soaring on its small charms.

The Canada geese (who grow endearingly from fluffy to flight-worthy) and Paquin (a cute gosling herself) are, of course, adorable. Watching them scuttle behind Paquin (as seen through the lens of a sort of "Goose cam" mobile camera) is one of the movie’s more amusing, precious visions. Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography is pretty and painterly. And the various motorized gliders and other flying machines are fascinating, neat gizmos. Children are especially going to love watching Amy in a "kite-winged goose trike," leading her flock through the sunlit skies. Now that’s fantasy!

FLY AWAY HOME (PG) — Contains very brief parental loss and very minor expletives.