Flying the Nest (or Ploey - You Never Fly Alone as it is known overseas) is an animated film directed by Árni Ásgeirsson. The film follows a young plover chick Ploey, who has not learned to fly when his family must migrate south, so he must survive winter and learn how to fly.
This is an interesting film, mainly because of the contrasting events and animation style. The Dreamworks/Pixar-style of animation is incredibly bright and colourful, with large disproportionate heads and eyes, giving the feel of a film directed at young children. Yet, there are no pulled punches in terms of death. The whole premise of the film hinges on death and the predator/prey relationship, with every antagonist being a predator, whether it be a cat, fox, or hawk. An odd choice to put such emphasis on the death and loss element, and yet it is still refreshing to have a film not trying to pull the wool over the audience's eyes.
The film feels a bit more like a series of scenes rather than a coherent storyline. The opening scene does a brilliant job at setting up the relationships between the various predatory and the prey bird species and has some military themes that play into the overall mindset of the birds. But after this scene, we are rushed through several stages of Ploey's development in order to get to the next plot device as quickly as possible. It makes much of the film feel like filler, and less engaging.
It is also quite peculiar in some of the stances that it takes, with migratory birds considering non-migratory birds to be cowards. It has a whole story arc, that has no real resolution or character development that would lead to a change in outlook for any of the characters. Simply another plot device that is used and cast away after it serves its purpose. There is an interesting scene that tries to bring sympathy to the primary antagonist by implying some mental health issues, but again it leads nowhere. There were many opportunities for these different arcs to interact with the main story, but everything remains segregated.
As such, there is little to appeal to more mature audiences, despite the constant threat of death making it content that may lead to some questions from the younger audiences.
The animation is quite well done. Not realistic by any means, but it doesn't aim to be. Young plover flight animations are a bit off, but what it does really well is the movement in its action scenes with Shadow (the antagonist) where it becomes almost a dogfight.
A very basic story of a plover overcoming its fears to face a powerful enemy head-on, but it goes no deeper. Nothing that the protagonist goes through in his entire adventure has any effect on him at all. Probably best to wait for the physical release so you can just sit the kids in front of the TV.