Holes

Synopsis: Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf) is a teenager who comes from a family where the men always have bad luck because of an ancient family curse. He is wrongly accused of stealing a pair of charity tennis shoes and is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile work detention camp in the desert where the kids are forced to dig character building holes all day every day. The story of how Stanley’s great-great grandfather got the curse way back in Latvia is interwoven with Stanley’s own story, as well as the history of Camp Green Lake, which has a bearing on why they’re digging holes all day. The boys are under orders to report anything special they might find in the holes. Stanley of course does find something and the mystery of the holes starts to unravel.

Holes is a Disney production based on the popular children's novel by Louis Sachar. To ensure that the film remained faithful to the book, Sachar wrote the screenplay and was on the set every day of production. Despite the slow start, and the legend of the curse set in a very un-Latvian like Latvia (I’m Latvian, I know these things), Holes is a pretty good film, full of adventure, mystery and action. Not to mention poisonous lizards and poisonous women.

I’m not a big fan of having multiple stories in one film, but it really works here with clever scriptwriting interweaving the legend, the history and the current day tale into an amusing and interesting film. The history includes rollicking adventures of the Wild Wild West with female outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow (Patricia Arquette) who clearly holds her own in the company of men.

In the face of danger, boredom, adversity etc, Stanley is admirably always trying to do the right thing. He might slip up occasionally, but he soon gets back on track. A little morality tale is slipped into all the adventure. Would you believe that accompanying the release of Holes is an Educator's Guide (with bonus lesson plans for the classroom)? Better than Jon Voight dolls at Macca’s I guess.

Brilliant casting with Sigourney Weaver as the warden of Camp Green Lake. She is tough, she is gorgeous, and she paints her nails with rattlesnake venom. She is a woman with a mission and doesn’t let anyone stand in her way. Jon Voight is Mr Sir, second in charge; he’s an over-the-top Texan baddie who’s gone a bit troppo in the desert heat. And he’s armed. An added delight is that he’s never entirely sure what the warden wants, which adds some more camp to an already fabulous character.

Other cast include Tim Blake Nelson, Henry Winkler, and Dulé Hill who is wasted here, having to deliver some of the most saccharine lines of the film.

Oh, I almost forgot, Yelnats is Stanley spelt backwards. Seemed to be important in the film.

 

 

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