Fly Away Reviews
Film Threat
The performances by all involved are stellar from start to finish, and the film tackles a tough subject with all the reverence and care one would hope to see...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Reel Film Reviews
Fly Away's overall success is hampered by its narrow focus and relatively uneventful storyline...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
BrianOrndorf.com
A stimulating sense of realism that helps to shape a raw, compassionate portrait of life lived with the disorder, finding pauses of behavior and response that shock and enlighten.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Top CriticJanet Grillo's modestly produced feature breaks no new ground in depicting those who live with autism -- both the afflicted and their loved ones.
Slant Magazine
Suffers from a generic sterility we've come to associate with made-for-TV movies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
A well-meant drama that never transcends its earnest aims, Janet Grillo's feature debut is notable mostly for an heroic turn from lead Beth Broderick.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
A defiantly unsentimental look at the complex codependency between a harried single mother and her severely autistic daughter.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
A showcase for Beth Broderick as the mom, Greg Germann as a charming neighbor who flirts with her and a fully immersed Ashley Rickards as the tantrum-prone teen, who appears to be on the intellectual plane of a 2-year-old.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The lovely, heartbreaking "Fly Away" benefits from superb performances and a gripping story managed with simplicity and grace by writer-producer-director Janet Grillo.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
NewsBlaze
An authentic tale of survival offering insight, hope and wings!
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
L.A. Weekly
The lead performances are solid, as are the supporting actors, and Grillo is more than competent as a director. But Fly Away could have been stronger if its antiseptic visual style... had been more adventurous.
A gripping, life-enhancing low-budget little film about the physically and emotionally punishing struggles of a single mother raising an autistic child.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
[Fly Away offers] exceptional performances by two femme leads and sensitive but unsentimental storytelling throughout.
