Movie: Holes
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Sigourney Weaver, John Voight,
Henry Winkler, Patricia Arquette
Directed by Andrew Davis; Written by Louis Sachar (Walt Disney Films)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes


A couple times this spring I saw Holes' trailer and I confess I wasn't really motivated to see this movie. My kids were plenty motivated though; the original book by Louis Sachar, who also did the screenplay, was a big hit with the pre-teen crowd. When I took the family to see it, to my surprise Holes captured my interest completely.

The story is an unlikely one concerning a family curse, buried treasure, the Old West and juvenile delinquents. Shia LaBeouf plays Stanley Yelnats the Fourth, who gets busted for lifting an expensive pair of athletic shoes, after they literally fell out of the sky on top of him. He's sentenced to Camp Greenlake where Mister Sir, the head taskmaster, looks to make a better citizen out of him by having him dig a five foot by five foot hole each day in the desert sun. There's no lake at Camp Greenlake, you see. But there used to be, about 120 years ago, and we also flashback to those times throughout the movie, and to the story of Stanley's great-grandfather and how he came to be cursed.

That's the beauty of Holes, there's several engaging sub-plots that make Stanley's story much richer. Director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) deftly cuts between them and makes great use of marquee talent such as Jon Voight as Mister Sir and Sigourney Weaver as the warden, but smaller roles are also handled by veterans such as Eartha Kitt and Henry Winkler. Patricia Arquette and Dule Hill give us the most heartfelt interracial kiss I've ever seen in the Old West, and it's their love which eventually creates the treasure and the need for all the Holes to find it and... it's not really very easy to synopsize all this. Oh, you noticed! Trust me, Davis does a great job sorting it all out for you.

I expected a summer camp kind of comedy with loveable rogues, a heavy dose of sugary sentimentality and slapstick, but Holes, even though it's definitely for kids, has a surprising amount of meat on its bones.

The Skinny:
Am I glad I saw the film? Yes
Would I go to see it again? We're sure to rent the video when it comes out and the Disney Channel can be counted upon to run this for years.

© 2003 - Rusty Pipes