Holes (film)
From AwardAnnals
| This creative work has a long or truncated description. Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description. |
 | |
| Director(s) | Andrew Davis |
|---|---|
| Distributor | Walt Disney Home Entertainment |
| Fans of author Louis Sachar’s book Holes will be delighted with this scrupulously faithful adaptation. After being wrongly found guilty of stealing a pair of sneakers, Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf) gets sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile correctional facility in the bed of a long-gone dry Texas lake. There—under the watchful eye of overseer Mr. Sir (a zesty Jon Voight), sneakily mean therapist Dr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson, O Brother Where Art Thou?), and the cool and cruel Warden (Sigourney Weaver)—Stanley and dozens of other delinquents are… | |
Reviews
Amazon.com
Fans of author Louis Sachar’s book Holes will be delighted with this scrupulously faithful adaptation. After being wrongly found guilty of stealing a pair of sneakers, Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf) gets sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile correctional facility in the bed of a long-gone dry Texas lake. There—under the watchful eye of overseer Mr. Sir (a zesty Jon Voight), sneakily mean therapist Dr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson, O Brother Where Art Thou?), and the cool and cruel Warden (Sigourney Weaver)—Stanley and dozens of other delinquents are forced to dig an endless series of holes that the Warden hopes will lead her to a precious secret left behind by a long-dead female outlaw (Patricia Arquette). Sachar’s book is beloved for its vivid characters and suspenseful plot; by sticking close to its source, Holes has become a dynamic, exciting, and surprisingly touching movie. —Bret Fetzer
Barnes and Noble
A publishing phenomenon, Louis Sachar’s multi-award-winning book Holes enjoys a fervent fan base that, like Harry Potter devotees, would not respond kindly to a film that took liberties with the source material. Outside of the slimming-down of the screen incarnation of hapless, cursed Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf), this film remains faithful to Sachar’s complex, time-shifting story (thanks, no doubt, to Sachar’s authoring of the screenplay). Stanley, like all Yelnats men, has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After being wrongly convicted of stealing a pair of sneakers, he is sent to Camp Green Lake. There is no lake. There is nothing green about it. Instead, the camp is located in the desert, hundreds of miles from water. “You want to run away?” he is asked by the menacing caretaker Mr. Sir (Jon Voight, sporting a Jimmy Neutron-like pompadour). “You’ll be buzzard food in three days.” The residents, a ragtag group of delinquents, are charged with digging holes each day in the hot sun, risking encounters with rattlesnakes and the dread yellow-spotted lizard. Stanley begins to suspect that the warden (Sigourney Weaver, in a deliciously nasty turn) is actually looking for something beneath the parched desert sands. Director Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) deftly grounds the fantastic tale, which also involves a vengeful fortune teller and a frontier schoolteacher turned notorious bandit (Patricia Arquette). Holes is one of the 2003’s family treasures. Donald Liebenson
Find this film
Related works
Holes: Original Soundtrack
The movie is about holes—specifically, a bunch of kids forced to dig them. Something else worth digging is the film’s soundtrack. Few of the 15 ultra-accessible songs miss their mark. Big-name artists Shaggy, Moby, and the Eels keep the kids hopping, while a heap of lesser-known acts also make impressive contributions, most notably Pepe Deluxe (the from-Mars-sounding “Everybody Pass Me By”) and the D-tent Boys (the irresistibly fun “Dig It”). It wouldn’t be a Disney soundtrack without a wannabe or two, and for that we have a sprinkling of flimsy rock and…
- 2001 YRCA-Junior winner
- 1999 Horn Book-fiction winner
- 1999 Newbery winner
- 1998 NBA–Youth winner
- 1998 LATimes–Young Adult finalist
- Score: 46.51
A darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment, by the author of There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom.
Stanley Yelnats’s family has a history of bad luck, so he isn’t too surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to a boys’ juvenile detention center, Camp Green Lake. There is no lake—it has been dry for over a hundred years—and it’s hardly a camp. As punishment, the boys must each dig a hole a day, five feet deep, five feet across, in the hard earth of the dried-up lake bed. The warden claims that this pointless labor builds character, but she…
