Descended
from a no-good pig-stealing great-great-grandfather, Stanley
Yelnats the IV (Shia LaBeouf) suffers from a family curse.
In turn, director Andrew Davis has come off of a run of bad
films that include Chain Reaction and Collateral
Damage. Through the high adventure and solid story-telling
of Holes, both end the cycles of bad fortune that have
plagued them.
In another
stroke of good fortune, Disney tapped novelist Louis Sachar
to adapt his own Newberry Award-winning novel. Sometimes this
sort of gambit doesn't work, but Sachar understands that what
works on the page doesn't always work on the screen. The resulting
film, a combination of western and prison drama with just
a touch of ghost story, proves to be the most ambitious and
honest major studio film of the year so far. But will it find
an audience?
Aside
from being squarely aimed at a difficult age group (10 to
14 year olds), Holes is hard to peg. At first, it's
the story of Stanley getting sent off to Camp Greenlake, a
Texas institution for juvenile offenders, for a crime he did
not commit. Chalk it up to the family curse; Stanley got hit
in the head by a pair of running shoes once owned by Clyde
"Sweetfeet" Livingston (Rick Fox), a baseball player who had
donated them for a charity auction.
The police
blame him for stealing the shoes, especially once they discover
that his family's apartment overflows with footwear. Stanley
the III (Henry Winkler) has been trying to invent a cure for
foot odor, creating both a curious stench and unfortunate
circumstantial evidence.
At Camp
Greenlake, the inmates spend their days digging holes five
feet wide by five feet deep. Their shovels are their measuring
stick. According to the quivery Dr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson),
the task builds character. But there is clearly something
darker at play in the motivations of Warden Walker (Sigourney
Weaver) and her slick but pinched assistant, Mr. Sir (Jon
Voight).
Once
upon a time, the Greenlake area did have a lake, but it, too,
is now under a curse. Rain has not fallen in this valley for
a hundred years, since a dark crime involving Kissin' Kate
Barlow the Bandit Queen (Patricia Arquette). How it all centers
on Stanley and his burgeoning friendship with the silent inmate
Zero (Khleo Thomas) forms the spine of a surprisingly warm,
surprisingly good, mystery.
To say
anymore about the plot would be to just unfair to a great
story. Suffice to say that there's a reason that Disney made
this film, and that's that somehow the book has grown insanely
popular with junior high kids. It's easy to see why.
Mixing
so many genres has its risks, but Sachar pulled it off beautifully.
Even the prison aspect works, because though the featured
inmates can be charming, it's also clear that they're there
for a reason. Sachar never lets us forget that they committed
crimes, and in some cases show no real remorse for it.
Davis,
the man who once gave us one of movies' greatest train wrecks
(and I mean that as praise) in The Fugitive, has returned
to storytelling with a spare style and a tastefulness that
should make the harsher elements palatable to parents. The
violence of the book remains, but much is left to the viewers'
imaginations, to, as the screenplay urges, "fill in the holes
ourselves."
Imagine
that - a family film that encourages us to think. It's doomed.
It does
a lot more than that. In some ways, Davis and company have
created a great primer for kids to learn about film language.
With at least three parallel stories going on in different
time periods, it flashes back and forth in time without warning,
but never loses the viewer. And though it still connects a
few plot point dots for us, it's still surprisingly subtle.
For a
movie carried largely by young actors, it's also surprisingly
well-acted. Not a single teen or pre-teen feels false. I'm
not a fan of the Disney Channel's Even Stevens, where
LaBeouf practices ridiculous physical shenanigans. Here, however,
the young actor underplays his role, supported by a group
of teens who have chosen to just be who they are. It works.
Of course,
they've got some great adult actors showing them the ropes.
Actually, Voight and Nelson toe the edge of cartoonishness,
but never quite go over. Though obviously meant to be comical,
their roles stay within the realm of the possible.
And Weaver…well,
she's just one of the greatest actresses of our time, a little
underappreciated because she's willing to appear in genre
projects like this. Heck, she even seems to enjoy them.
Okay.
Obviously, I liked this. The audience I saw it with liked
this. By all reports, teachers all across the country who
have been using the book in the classroom liked this. Kids
under eight may not, because it's a little intense. But if
you're over eight, get out there and prove to the studios
that hey, quality films have a place in the mass marketplace.
