Parents Television Council Reviews

PTC reviews aim to provide you with advance information about an entertainment offering so that you can be the final arbiter of what you and your family see.

Your Kids Will Dig "Holes"
By Ben Mozer

Oftentimes, finding a movie the entire family – including your teen or pre-teen – will enjoy can be a difficult task.  Today, many of the films made for a teen and preteen audience (especially those films marketed to boys) are filled with dangerous stunts, overt sexuality and foul language.  In an ever-increasing cesspool of teen films, Holes stands apart as a breath of fresh air.

Sure to be enjoyed by parents and children alike, Holes (based on the Newberry Award-winning book of the same name) perfectly captures the essence of being a teenage boy. This film brilliantly combines the realistic interactions between teenagers with the struggles teen's face when placed in thorny situations.

Holes honorably portrays strong family ties, the merit of hard work and teamwork, the resilience of the teen spirit and the necessity of faithful friends during trying times.  It is for these reasons the Parents Television Council gladly awards Holes The PTC Seal of Approval.

From the beginning of this film we are swept into the crazy life of Stanley Yelnats IV (Stanley spelled backwards), and the curse his grandfather a "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing man" placed on the family.  No doubt due to the curse, Stanley is wrongly convicted of stealing a pair of sneakers and is sent to a reform camp to be transformed into an "upstanding citizen."  The problem is Stanley already is an upstanding citizen!

Camp Green Lake is a modern-day Cool Hand Luke-style reform camp for teenagers, complete with an evil warden and henchmen.  Squid, Armpit, ZigZag, Magnet, X-Ray, and Zero are campers Stanley befriends.  The boys are forced to dig holes (of which there are thousands to dig) in a dried up lake bed in an attempt to "build character."  All the while they are to inform the Warden (SIGOURNEY WEAVER) and her goons, Mr. Sir (JON VOIGHT) or Dr. Pendanski (TIM BLAKE NELSON), when they find anything "special."  When Stanley becomes curious over the warden's interest, the story unfolds into a series of fun, and extraordinary coincidences.

The film magically works three plots into the story line: the happenings at Camp Green Lake, the history behind the Yelnats family curse, and the story of Kissin' Kate Barlow (PATRICIA ARQUETTE), a female gunslinger in the Old West. The film works much like a teen mind, wandering from person to person, from back-story to back-story, until the audience begins to realize the connections between them all.  As the plot quickens, what initially appeared to be snippets of unrelated events are revealed to be integral to each other and to Stanley's fate.  And because this is a review and not a spoiler, I'll stop here. 

It is refreshing to see talented actors like Jon Voight and Sigourney Weaver lend their talents to a family-friendly film.  The true star of this movie is Shia LaBeouf, who, as Stanley, captures the comedy of innocence and mischief in a way comparable to a young Tom Hanks.  Very rarely do we see a newcomer carry a movie with such ease.

Writer Louis Sachar and Director Andrew Davis create a spirited and miraculous down-to-earth film.  Andrew Davis is best known for his action films The Fugitive and Under Siege so expect action sequences more exciting than the average kid-flick.  And though the Old West scenes are mildly violent (gunslingers have a tendency to sling their guns) and the boys do tussle a little, this is nothing that will corrupt a child, and surely won't bore anyone.  The MPAA has given Holes a PG rating for violence, mild language and some thematic elements. 

Holes is the recipient of The PTC Seal of Approval because messages of character, friendship and value of a loving family are rarely found in today's teen and pre-teen films.  We know you will like Holes as much as we did, and we gladly recommend this for anyone over the age of ten.
 

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