On a Wing and a Prayer

As a hobbyist pilot, if there's an airplane movie, I'm watching it: Positives: 1) Good family movie that is not afraid to use faith. 2) it's got cute Heather Graham who did not sell herself to the monster Harvey Weinstein. 3) Heather praying the Lord's Prayer (I'm not religious, but the way this nation is heading to, I'm becoming more of faith).

Negatives: 1) Lacking serious aviation technical advice. Vertical speed indicator's showing a gradual descend, yet the altimeter is climbing like a rocket, and many others. 2) Like some have mentioned, annoying kids.

I do fly many Angel Flights in South FL, hopefully I'll hear Doug over the radio one day.

This movie which is based on a true story could have been so much better. Dennis Quaid did a fine job in his performance and those who portrayed his family did an ok job. My major complaint is why did Hollywood need to make out two preteen kids (who was not involved in the real event) act like they are geniuses. I found this addition very distracting and insulting to have two kids listening to air traffic controllers and trying to explain what is happening to each other and us the audience. This part was totally fictionalized and unnecessary. Other than it was on ok family movie. Could have been better though.

...but I couldn't. The first part of the movie was just tedious. I know it was about building up the family context, but it was tedious. There were several points where I almost gave up on the movie. The blonde daughter was very annoying. There was a point where she had to grab an epi pen out of a backpack in the cargo hold, and instead of her unfastening the webbing in the cargo hold, for what seemed like a long time we had to see her panicking as she tried to frantically reach through the webbing to feel for the backpack. All I could think was "how stupid of a daughter did this guy have?" Even my 10yo son would've tried to unhook the strapping. On the plus side, it's a family friendly movie and maybe a preteen or younger might find the movie entertaining. Most adults would probably not get past the mediocre acting and plot development.

I have no actual knowledge of the real story that inspired this movie, but the end credits show photos and give explanations of the real people involved. It says of the King Air 200, the subject plane, "One of the most difficult to fly."

My wife and I watched this streaming on Amazon Prime. Both of us feel the same, the movie is done in a somewhat hokey and sentimental style, most of it in the air as they are trying to figure out how to land the plane safely while communicating with ATC. We both think the real story has a much better movie in there somewhere but this one was not particularly well made. Still, it was a fun watch, I laughed a number of times but probably where no humor was intended.

NB - I asked my son, a pilot who has flown a King Air a number of times, to watch the movie and see what he thinks. His opinion wasn't very favorable at all, like most of the rest of us he thinks the filmmakers botched the whole movie, especially the parts that involved flying the plane and landing.

We are glad we saw it for the knowledge that the real people are OK, but in truth it is not a very good movie. The part I actually enjoyed the most were the two younger kids in their home, not far from the Florida airport, following the plane on Flight Aware and speculating whether the plane would land safely. I don't know if that is factual or not but I found it entertaining.

This movie is bad in every possible way with the acting and script absolutely the worst. Plot - bad. Scenery - pathetic. Directing - non existent. This movie should garner a few Razzie nominations including Worst Picture and Worst Script. They managed to turn a real life drama into a bad comedy. I endured through the movie hoping it would get better but that never happened.

I think the "best" part, or more accurately, the least bad part was after the movie ended and they had clips of the actual characters. They should have considered using these people in the movie. I would probably have liked these characters. This movie could not have been much worse. Please don't waste your time like I did!