True-life adventure of Canadian artist-inventor Bill Lishman, who figures out how to guide an orphan flock of geese to a migratory paradise in North Carolina. For a children's film, it's made with uncommon care (by Carroll Ballard, of The Black Stallion), even if much of that care comes down to fussily prettified photography: Lelouchian raindrops at night on a car windshield; a peach sunrise; Vermeerish veils of white light; a Wyeth composition of a background farmhouse and a foreground girl in brown grass. The bonding motif is lucidly unfolded. (Motherless girl bonds with motherless geese. Helping the girl to help the geese helps her estranged father to bond with his daughter.) The cooked-up suspense, though, is very mild; the standard antagonists very feeble (a pig-headed game warden, a fat-cat condo developer); and the total effect a bit bland. With Anna Paquin, Jeff Daniels, Dana Delany. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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