Harry here... Ok, so Andrew "The Fugitive" Davis directs a kid's film called HOLES featuring Jon Voight, Sigourney Weaver and Patricia Arquette about a forced labor boot camp for Bad Kids where they're forced to search for buried treasure.... that there's a gypsy curse, killer lizards and other weirdness? Sounds like it could have the makings of a fun Kid's Film. Never heard of the book this is based on, but Dr Doom here has... So read on...
Hey Harry,
I’ve been reading this site for a long time, but never had anything to post. So anyways, back at the beginning of November I was in a test screening for Holes at the Edwards theater in La Verne, CA. I had read the book in 8th grade and it was really good. When I heard they were gonna make it into a movie I was totally psyched, but didn’t know exactly how they were gonna pull it off. The book tells three separate stories, and balancing them all together wouldn’t be easy. Andrew Davis, the guy who directed it also did The Fugitive (best thriller of the 90s, definitely), but he also did Collateral Damage, which sucked, so I was nervous.
The story is about a kid named Stanley (Shia Labeouf) a goofy kid who gets sent to a boot camp from troubled kids after he gets wrongly nailed by the cops for stealing from a sports auction. (Rick Fox from the Lakers has a cool cameo, wish he could give Shaq some acting lessons). Anyway, the camp is run by Mr. Sir (Jon Voight, who is funny as shit) and the Warden (Sigourney Weaver, sort of playing Ripley gone evil). The kids at the camp have to dig ditches every day trying to excavate for some kind of treasure that’s a big mystery. We find out what they’re looking through a series of flashbacks that tie in to the outlaw Kissing Kate’s (Patricia Arquette) story in the Old West. There’s also the storyline of Stanley’s great grandfather, who ended up with a gypsy curse after pissing off a fortuneteller.
Now I have no idea about what the fuck happened in Westbury, because the movie I saw was great, and the audience really seemed to have a good time. People were laughing at the jokes and were totally into the action, which was really well done. There’s a scene where Stanley steals a pickup truck that I probably shouldn’t spoil, though anyone who read the book knows what I’m talking about. One of the side dangers of the camp are these cool yellow spotted lizards that kind of look like Gila monsters. Stanley gets chased by one and Voight blows it away. I wasn’t really expecting to see CG animals in the movie, but they looked pretty cool. Later on, there’s a creepy sequence where Stanley and Zero get trapped in one of the holes with dozens of lizards and they have to stand there while the creatures crawl all over them. It was pretty nuts, and kind of reminded me of the tarantula scene in the beginning of Raiders, which was cool.
Overall, the movie is dead on with the book, maybe because Louis Sachar, who wrote the novel also did the screenplay. The only thing that wasn’t that great was Patricia Arquette. She had an awesome role to work with, but she didn’t have any fun with it and was just kind of dull. Come to think of it, I’ve never really even liked her in anything, except maybe Human Nature. Also, I know how the movie is never exactly like the book and I understand how they had to trim it down for run time, but I wished there was a little more about Stanley’s great grandfather and how the treasure came to be, because it doesn’t seem as important as it was when I read it.
I agree with the other review that the movie was a little darker and edgier than most Disney movies, but isn’t that a good thing? Yeah, it’s more adult than Country Bears, but it’s not like this is an episode of OZ either. I don’t want to pay eight bucks to see Blank Check, do you? The movie has some real tension, and actually brought up some interesting issues about juveniles crime, racism, and if we’re destined to become like our parents. If this is where Disney is headed, I think it’s for the best.
I’m out. If you post this, call me Dr. Doom.
