Every so often there’s a children’s film that can be
entertaining and enlightening at the same time. The new movie
”
Holes,
”
currently playing at Premiere Cinemas, is one of those rare
works.
Every so often there’s a children’s film that can be entertaining and enlightening at the same time. The new movie “Holes,” currently playing at Premiere Cinemas, is one of those rare works.
Don’t let the title throw you. There’s a lot more to this movie than a few teenagers with shovels.
The movie, based on the wildly popular novel by Louis Sachar and adapted by the author, is a wonderful tale for older children – about 11 years old and up – that deals with issues such as friendship, loyalty, personal honor and just plain doing the right thing.
But just because this is a movie whose target audience is children does not mean adults will be bored stiff, largely because of some superior character acting by Hollywood heavyweights including Jon Voight (“Midnight Cowboy,” “Deliverance” and “Mission Impossible”) as the disturbingly delightful character Mister Sir.
Sigourney Weaver (“Alien,” “Gorillas in the Mist” and “Galaxy Quest”) is also excellent as the seductive-but-deadly Warden Walker. Veteran character actor Tim Blake Nelson (“O Brother, Where art Thou,” “Minority Report” and “The Thin Red Line”) rounds out the wonderful group of adult cast members
But this film also features a great cast of young actors whose unlikely personalities and childlike antics are the primary focus of the film and the emotional glue that holds this cinematic work together.
The story centers around a very average kid from New York named Stanley Yelnats (whose first name is his last name spelled backwards). Stanley is wrongfully convicted of stealing a pair of shoes from a professional baseball player and sentenced to 16 months in a peculiar reform school in the desert called Camp Green Lake.
The camp’s manager, Mister Sir, is a stiff-backed, bowlegged crank whose passion is shooting yellow spotted lizards.
The reform school claims to build character in the juvenile delinquents by forcing them to dig a 5-foot-deep by 5-foot-wide hole every day in the blistering heat of a dry Texas lake bed.
As the new kid in the group, Stanley works hard to earn the trust of his fellow delinquents, who have abandoned their given names for nicknames like X-Ray, Armpit, Zig-Zag, Magnet, Squid and Zero. Along the way, Stanley, who earns the name Caveman, learns a lot about himself, his family history and his personal destiny.
The story artfully cuts back and forth from the current time to a story of the Old West. While the modern characters – mainly the adults – are played in an over-the-top style, the Old West tale is told straight, with Patricia Arquette as Kate, a schoolteacher who gradually falls in love with a Sam the Onion Man, a black farmer played by Dule Hill (best known for his role on “West Wing”) in the years not long after the Civil War.
When things end tragically, Kate turns her rage at authority into a second career as Kissin’ Kate Barlow, a bandit famous for leaving a lipstick-stained kiss on the heads of the men she has killed.
Becaue there is some violence and some mild language in “Holes,” it is probably not suited for youths under 10 or 11 years old.
