Holes, based on Louis Sachar’s award-winning children’s book, is one of those movies that you want to be better than it is. It has a good first act, a so-so second act and a strong third act.
Holes is the story of one Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf), offspring of a family that has been cursed since the first Stanley Yelnats inadvertently ticked off a gypsy woman (Eartha Kitt) many years ago in his native Latvia. It seems that if your name is Stanley Yelnats, good luck is something that happens to the other guy. When Stanley is wrongly accused and convicted of stealing sneakers from a shelter (they were donated by a pro athlete for a charity auction), he is sent to a work farm in the desert.
There, he and the other juvenile delinquents are forced by the ruthless warden (Sigourney Weaver) and her despicable toadies (Tim Blake Nelson and Jon Voight) to dig holes in the hot sun. Stanley suspects there is a connection to the legendary Kissin’ Kate — a murderer who buried treasure in the desert 100 years ago — but he’s not sure what.
You know you’re in trouble when the most interesting characters in a kids’ movie are the grownups. Weaver fastens her teeth around the role of Warden Walker the way a rattlesnake might wrap its tail around a hapless prairie dog. Her character could be the illegitimate daughter of Cruella De Ville and the warden from Cool Hand Luke.
But the movie really comes alive when it tells the back story of Kissin’ Kate. The strong portrayal by Patricia Arquette made me want to see more of the character. I don’t see an Oscar nomination in Arquette’s future for this role, but she’s easily the best part of the movie.
Unfortunately, the movie’s not called Kissin’ Kate — it’s called Holes. But when the film focuses on the kids, the story falls behind and the tone hovers somewhere between darkly comic and just plain dark. It’s as if director Andrew Davis couldn’t decide in which direction to go. Consequently, the movie is too light to be convincing as drama, yet too intense to really be funny.
Despite the weaknesses in the story line, the ensemble cast of child actors is just fine. LaBeouf makes up in likability what he lacks in charisma as Stanley. Khleo Thomas is by far the best of the kids as Hector Zero, which is especially impressive since he barely has any lines.
There are certainly nice moments. It’s nice to see Kitt back in action. She hams it up big-time as Madame Zeroni and looks as if she’s having a great time doing so. It’s also fun to see Henry Winkler playing Stanley’s hapless inventor father.
The movie almost redeems itself in the last 20 minutes or so as all the loose ends are tied together. It packs something of a punch and possesses the emotional heft missing from most of the movie.
But that’s not enough to recommend it.
Holes
PG
Playing at area theaters
Two reels out of four
Lockdown
R
Available Tuesday
Although it’s being marketed as an urban "gangsta" picture, Lockdown is eerily reminiscent of The Glass House, a heartbreaking and gritty TV movie with Alan Alda from the early ’70s. It focuses on three young black men (played by Richard T. Jones, Gabriel Casseus and De’Aundre Bonds) from Albuquerque, N.M., who are mistakenly convicted for a cop shooting and sent up the river to do hard time. For its milieu, the film is often surprisingly sensitive, even subtle at times. On a sad but ironic note: Bonds, who plays the weaker of the three friends, is in prison for voluntary manslaughter.
