I don't typically post comments for movies, but I had to write in about this one. After seeing a decent rating (6.2 stars on IMDb is not bad), and mostly positive reviews, includes superlative statements such as: "It could be the most powerful animal-themed film I have seen.", "Defining Family Entertainment...perhaps re-defining." and "Put it on your "must-see" list.".We rented "All Roads Lead Home" for our family, and were put off by the overt over-the-top animal rights themes, low budget look of the film (simplistic camera work, minimal post-processing, poor editing, sub par acting) and *very* choppy plot. The story seemed contrived in parts to go out of its way to pull at emotional connections to animals, and in all but a very few scenes was ineffective at doing so.That is not to say that this film should not be watched, or is worthless, it just seemed like from many of the comments on IMDb that this was an Oscar-quality film. I would rather people go into this with their eyes open, so I decided to post. A number of these comments appear to be written from the perspective of a personal friend of the film crew, or someone who was invited to a private screening. Hardly a unbiased source. I don't at all mean to question the integrity of those comment authors, we are all entitled to our opinion! But I did want to balance that out with a more realistic look at this film.To realistically rate this anything higher than 5/10 stars would be quite a leap, even for someone who enjoys cheesy sappy movies. This was a cheesy sappy movie that was done poorly with a small budget.I would not recommend this movie, and feel there are many better choices on the market when it comes to family friendly movies.

I didn't watch this movie with high expectations so I wasn't too disappointed but I feel like there was a lot of wasted potential. What could have been a touching story about reverence and respect for life, and healing after a tragedy turned into nothing more than animal rights propaganda. I found the acting from all parties to be quite unconvincing. The "troubled daughter" as it read on the back of the movie cover, was a sweet grieving little girl who made a few mistakes with the best intentions at heart. I was not raised on a ranch, but I have a hard time believing that animals are tossed aside and killed so quickly and completely without thought as in this film. For the younger audience this movie could possibly be enjoyable but let me put it this way, if I wanted to watch some kind of PETA film, I would have rented one.

****** SPOILERS !!! ******I rented this film and watched it with my teenage daughter. Overall good, with many issues that are food for discussion. I won't repeat those here.My problems have to do with portraying the rancher and his help as barbaric. It's one thing to humanely cull animals that are not useful, or too sick and expensive to be cost-effective to keep. This would have been distressing enough for a tender-hearted city girl. When it came to (apparently) drowning unwanted puppies, though, I began to wonder if I was watching a propaganda film for a certain animal- rights group. This is NOT, in my experience, typical behavior for a livestock operation, it's also illegal, and the girl should have called the law on 'em.

The description 'family film' gets tossed around a lot. I have found that either these so called family movies are either A) animated or B) still contain language, themes, etc that aren't exactly family friendly.All Roads Lead Home is different. It is a wonderful film that manages to be sad, happy, funny, touching, and uplifting all at once. I won't go into to too many details as I don't want to ruin the story, but the message is simple, every living thing deserves a chance.The movie also deals with death and dying which in my opinion is a positive. It shows that death is a part of life, it isn't glossed over but it also is shown morbidly or overly traumatic.All in all it is a great film that I highly recommend...it will make you cry, make you laugh, make you think and most importantly if you watch it with children, make you talk. There are a ton of discussion topics that are dealt with in a positive way and I think that is both important and not something we see a lot of in 'family films.' See this movie.