A family of orphaned geese who lost their way. A 14 year-old kid who will lead them home. To achieve the incredible, you have to attempt the impossible.
Thirteen year old Amy Alden (Anna Paquin) opens her eyes to take in the cold, sterile surroundings of a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. They come to rest on the face of her estranged father, Thomas Alden, (Jeff Daniels) who breaks the devastating news that her mother did not survive the car accident. The life Amy knew is gone forever.
Soon, Amy is bundled off to the Ontario farm to live with her estranged father, an artist/inventor who has shaped his environment to reflect his eclectic interests. Life with dad will certainly be different. It is difficult, too. Amy is a stranger in the country of her birth. She is not sure how to relate to her father's girlfriend Susan Barnes (Dana Delany). Overwhelmed and still grieving for her mother, Amy spends hours alone, wandering around the farm.
One day, Amy's travels through the farm's woods lead to a discovery that touches her: a nest of orphaned goose eggs. Amy gathers them up, takes them home and builds a makeshift incubator. She nurtures the eggs until they hatch. And, since geese imprint on whoever they see first, Amy becomes Mother Goose.
Seeing his daughter happy for the first time since her mother's death, Thomas does not have the heart to deny her family of goslings. Time passes quickly and the young geese thrive in the rustic setting under the love and care lavished on them by Amy, Thomas, Susan and Thomas's mechanic pal, Barry.
The idyll is disturbed when an officious wildlife officer tells Thomas that it is illegal to raise wild geese without clipping their wings. The idea of grounding Amy's feathered friends outrages Thomas; he knows that nature will compel the geese to migrate south in the fall and that the flock must be allowed to go. Amy agrees, but there is a problem. Amy's geese have never learned to fly and with no other geese to show them the way, they seem doomed. Thomas, however, has found a cause and, with a determination born of his need to help Amy, he decides to use his modest flying skills and hang glider experience to teach the geese to fly....
With the help of friends, Thomas attaches a small engine to his hang glider. The results at first are catastrophic! Again and again Thomas tries and fails to get his motorized glider off the ground. Finally, he does it. He is flying. Slowly, with Amy's cautious help, he gets the geese, now full-grown, to follow him around and imprint on the sound of the engine and the sight of the strange little aircraft. But, on the day they plan to have the geese take off with the aircraft, they hit a snag. Repeated attempts, with Thomas at the controls, prove fruitless; the geese don't want to leave Amy on the ground. Thomas finally realizes that he must build a second plane and teach Amy to fly. He bases his design on the safest kind of machine, a motorized ultra-lite which looks like a giant goose.
After several flying lessons - for pilot and geese - they form a plan to lead the geese down the east coast of the United States to a winter home in North Carolina. Plans are finalized, various government hassles are overcome (including a daring daylight raid to free the confiscated geese ... ), and our intrepid aviators - all 17 of them - are under way.
The airborne adventurers battle bad weather, startled air force officials and a host of other pitfalls to arrive safely, and in the nick of time, at the geese's new home.
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