Fly Away is a story about a single, work at home mother named Jeanne (Beth Roderick) who has an autistic teenage daughter named Mandy (Ashley Rickards–One Tree Hill). As Mandy grows older, Jeanne’s ability to manage her daughter’s disability becomes much more difficult. Not only does it strongly affect her personal life and ability to form relationships, both romantic and friendly, but it also has taken a toll on her work life as well. Fly Away is about that point where a parent must choose to either hold on tight and continually try to meet the needs of their child or choose to let go as they grow and mature with their specific problem.
The film is directed by Janet Grillo, who herself has a child with disabilities and has been confronted by this very problem of love and her child’s future. This film, which first started out as a short film entitled Flying Lessons, was clearly a personal film and one made to show the hardships of parents with disabled children. While this film may have achieved that goal, it seemed overly dramatic at times by the forceful performance of Beth Roderick and the stubborn and blinded nature of her character Jeanne. I understand that love will prevent someone from splitting up with their child, but when recommendations come from so many outside sources and then you can watch and feel yourself deteriorating, I feel like it should definitely become clear to you that it might be time to let go of your child. Jeanne was so obsessed with Mandy and making sure she could “fit in” with the other children that she was in denial of how serious Mandy’s problems had become and how they affected her. I believe it took way to long for her to realize how much Mandy has affected and slowly deteriorated her life; it just didn’t feel real to me.
As for Mandy, I’m not a doctor and can’t really comment on how authentic her performance was since there are so many different degrees of autism, but what I can say is that compared to Dusitn Hoffman in Rain Man, Ashley Richards was like a six year old.
Fly Away was a very repetitive film in which the good neighbor/potential lover, Pete (JR Bourne–Cold Case), was always trying to help Jeanne out with Mandy, the school principal kept saying Mandy didn’t belong in her type of school, the husband who kept recommending the same institution as the principal, and the repetitive screaming fits of Mandy all made me want to throw up. I probably watched the aforementioned scenes three times each throughout the film, I get it, she has problems and the mom doesn’t want to accept it now let’s move on.
Overall, this movie wasn’t very good. It could have been cut down to 20, maybe 25 minutes, and still would have gotten the same message across, but wait, that version already exists…hmm. The acting was mediocre at best, there was nothing to praise directorially, and whenever it tried to strike an emotional chord I just got frustrated. I will give it props for finding the right dramatic turning points and for making JR Bourne’s character a very real and believable person, but other than that it didn’t really do much else for me.
Rating: A bad, made-for-TV Lifetime film (3.5/10)
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