Holes (18 April 2003)
directed by Andrew Davis
starring Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Shia LaBeouf, Khleo Thomas, Jake M. Smith, Byron Cotton, Brenden Jefferson, Miguel Castro, Max Kasch, Noah Poletiek, Roma Maffia, Siobhan Fallon, Henry Winkler, Nathan Davis, Eartha Kitt, Patricia Arquette, Dulé Hill, Scott Plank, Allan Kolman, Damien Luvara
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MPAA rating: Studio: Blue Rider Pictures, Chicago Pacific Entertainment, Green Lake Productions, Phoenix Pictures, Walden Media, Walt Disney Pictures Script: Louis Sachar Based on the book by: Louis Sachar Music: Joel McNeely Running time: 117 minutes Tags: Adventure; Comedy; desert; Drama; Family Film; novel adaptation; onions; prison; shovels; Texas; treasure Tactical strength: [7/10]
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for violence, mild language and some thematic elements
Digging holes builds character. So every day at Camp Green Lake juvenile rehabilitation center every boy digs a five-foot deep hole five-feet in diameter into the dirt of a dry desert lake bed. Our main character, Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LeBeouf), receives an eighteen-month sentence to Camp Green Lake for stealing a pair of sports shoes donated to an orphanage by a major-league baseball player. Stanley didn't really steal the shoes, but he only meekly defends himself because he believes that bad things happen to him and his family because of a long-running family curse. As a family movie, the camp has a comic atmosphere with a very serious undertone created by the staff. Mr. Sir (Jon Joight) directs the everyday events and discipline, Dr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson) provides guidance counseling, and The Warden (Sigourney Weaver) quietly oversees everything from her comfortable, air-conditioned cabin. These principle adult actors don't dumb down their performances for Holes, and they treat their roles with as much seriousness as they would in an adult drama. These performances, along with well-played youth roles, elevate Holes from an everyday family movie, to a compelling story that all ages will enjoy.
Amazingly, Holes also incorporates three other intersecting plot lines in with the story about Stanley. One arc tells the story of Stanley's great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats (Damien Luvara), who as a young man lived in rural eastern Europe. Elya consulted a fortune-teller, Madame Zeroni (Eartha Kitt), for advice on winning a woman's love. Elya didn't follow through on his agreement with Madame Zeroni, bringing a curse upon him and his family "for always and eternity." The second arc tells the story of Elya's son Stanley I (Allan Kolman), born in the United States after Elya immigrated. Stanley made a fortune in the stock market and decided to move to California. Stanley lost his fortune to the bandit Kissin' Kate (Patricia Arquette), who robbed his stagecoach in Texas. The third story arc tell Kissin' Kate's story about how she started as a simple schoolteacher and fell in love with a Negro man Sam (Dulé Hill). When the local rich boy, Trout Walker (Scott Plank) fails to win Kate's love, he kills Sam in revenge. Kate turns into a bandit and invokes a curse on the Walker family.
So we have two family curses and four story arcs to resolve in a two-hour movie, and director Andrew Davis successfully pulls this off. In the best way, Davis takes the elements of each arc and wraps everything neatly together at the end. My only real complaint about the exposition comes from some confusion about how we learn the information. Since we follow Stanley IV as the main character, we learn most of the information about the other arcs as Stanley learns the information from others or as he relates the stories to his camp friend Zero (Khleo Thomas). For several of the flashback sequences, we don't have any tie in to Stanley, so essentially the narration moves from a third-person limited suddenly to an omniscient point of view. Perhaps Stanley already knew the stories, but in several cases, we don't get any indication that he's remembering or telling the stories in the action of the film.
I think we should also give Davis credit for allowing Louis Sachar to write the screenplay from his best-selling children's book. You get a sense from the writing that Sachar has similar ideas about boys as Father Flanagan did in Boys Town, that inside every boy is a good boy. In Holes, we don't see much development in Stanley IV, but you get a sense that much more character development happens in the book. In one DVD commentary about casting, Davis points out that in the book, Stanley starts out as a fat kid and ends up losing his weight through digging so many holes. Since shooting time didn't allow for showing weight change in Stanley, Davis cast the role with a skinny lead. Often weight change, an outward appearance, symbolically represents inner personality changes as well, so I would have to guess that the book provides more satisfactory development of Stanley's character than the film. I liked the film, and as with any good underdog story, we cheer for Stanley and Zero as they work to overcome both the oppression of their immediate situation and their family history.
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Holes written by Louis Sachar
