Like last year's Tuck Everlasting, Holes is a story that I'm
sure works MUCH better as a novel than as a movie. How do I know this having
not read the Louis Sachar book the new flick is based on? Simple. The
movie version just doesn't work, while the best-selling book has been published
in nearly 30 countries and has been showered with more than 25 literary awards.
It makes you appreciate the Harry Potter films all the more. The first
two J.K. Rowling stories were tricky books to adapt to the big screen.
Due to their length and detail, they had to run at least two-and-a-half hours.
Like them or not, they were never dull. Holes, by contrast, feels like
an assignment. There is no wonder, magic, or charm here, even though the movie
tries hard to be both wonderful, magical, and charming. Seriously, this is a
flick in which we have to watch kids on a Cool Hand Luke-like chain gang
for long stretches of time dig holes in the desert for a character known as
"The Warden" (Sigourney Weaver). Eventually, two of the kids
look to escape, which only leads to tedious episodes of the two wandering the
sands looking for water and shade.
Shia LaBeouf makes his movie debut as Stanley Yelnats and seems to channel
the spirit of Mark-Linn Baker in what amounts to a serviceable lead performance.
Stanley is a kid who seems to constantly have bad luck thanks to a family curse
that dates back over 100 hundred years. When he is sent to Camp Green Lake for
being caught with a stolen pair of shoes, he meets a special kid named Zero
(Khleo Thomas) who becomes his best friend.
Together, they figure out that The Warden and her two cronies, Mr. Sir (Jon
Voight) and Dr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson), are using juvenile
delinquents as slave labor in the quest for something buried deep under the
desert sands. They soon learn that it has something to do with the Old West
legend of Kissin' Kate Barlow (Patricia Arquette, seen in flashback sequences),
a former schoolmarm-turned-outlaw who went on a crime spree after town's folk
burned her school and killed a kindly black man (Dule Hill) after she
kissed him. Even better, what they are digging for may even yield clues as to
how to lift the curse that has plagued the Yelnats family for decades.
This would be compelling stuff if not for the film's slow-crawl pace and sketchy
characters. I was really disappointed that the various kid characters never
really gelled as a group on screen. They all have colorful names like ZigZag,
Armpit, X-Ray, Squid, and Magnet. But they come across as leftovers from Steven
Spielberg's Lost Boys from Hook. They never capture that magic that
the Harry Potter kids have managed to exude so effortlessly, to say nothing
of the young casts of such fabled treasures from my childhood and adolescence
as The Bad News Bears, The Goonies, or Stand by Me.
I know the book is beloved, so I am bound to have some fans of the story write
me that I don't understand the appeal, especially to youngsters. My problem
is not with the story, which contains some really cool messages about friendship,
survival, and heart. It's with the execution by director Andrew Davis
and his filmmaking team. The movie never stops looking for an identity, as witnessed
in the constant switching back and forth between Joel McNeely's fine
score and a soundtrack of pop tunes from such contemporary artists as Shaggy,
Moby, Beck, and Eagle-Eye Cherry. And while some may praise
Davis' decision to have Sachar write the screenplay based on his book, structurally
the film could have benefited from a more seasoned screenwriter to transform
the novel's book sensibilities to movie sensibilities.
Holes didn't work for me. But if you or your kid are a big fan of Sachar's
work, you'll probably enjoy the story you know so well brought to life on the
big screen. If you're not a fan and are forced to sit through this one as a
favor, you may feel compelled to shot something sarcastic at the screen about
halfway through just to amuse yourself. Something like ... oh, I don't know
... "They should've called it Plot Holes!"
But that would just be wrong.
Holes is rated PG for violence, mild language, and some thematic
elements.
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