Reviews

Its not often one sees a movie that really seems to understand what its like to be a kid. Too often, children are portrayed as precocious twenty-somethings trapped in the bodies of fifth graders: children whose wisdom and goodness would make Socrates look like Homer Simpson. (For further study see Jerry Maguire and Contact). On the other hand, movies made for the ten and under crowd often take place in a world free from violence and pain, where the worst thing that could happen to a kid is a stolen bike or a serious grounding. Holes makes neither of these mistakes. The kids and teens are just as dumb as I was, and the world they live in, while not being seriously naturalistic, is, at least, properly serious.

The movie gets going as Stanley Yelnats (Shia LaBeouf) is mistakenly accused of stealing a pair of valuable shoes, and is sent to a boy's correctional facility. Except, this juvenile camp feels like Boy's Town if it was run by the guards from The Shawshank Redemption. There Stanley is indoctrinated by the gruff Mr. Sir (John Voight with crazy hair and a brilliant performance).

The only activity this camp provides for these wayward youth is digging holes. The camp's philosophy on this matter is `You take a bad boy, make him dig holes all day, and it turns him into a good boy.' Whether or not this theory works is doubtful, because Stanley soon experiences many cruelties and humiliations at the hands of his fellow reprobates. Don't let the cutesy nicknames fool you (X-Ray, Zig Zag, Armpit, Zero), these kids are just like your friends in the sixth grade, or to quote Rushmore, `With friends like you who needs friends?' Not that the other campers are as bad as all that, nor does the movie focus on the cruelties of youth. The kids come around, but never completely, and the movie (like Stanley himself) doesn't worry about them too much. Both of them have bigger things on their mind.

The story of Holes switches back and forth between the present and the past. Like the palindromic name Stanley Yelnats it begins at opposite ends chronologically and works toward the center. Where the end of the past story and the beginning of the present story are explained. The transitions are gentle enough that the viewer does not feel jerked around too much. Even though the transitions are entirely organic, I can excuse the random transitions because, like I said earlier. The filmmakers actually have something on their mind. They really do have a story to tell. Furthermore, Louis Sachar, the writer of the book and the screenplay seems to have gotten the tone just right for a movie for kids - just enough silliness and just enough bitterness. Stanley's father job is unreal (he is seeking to find the cure for foot odor), but Stanley's emotions are very real. As someone in the movie says (see the movie to find out why), `Peaches and Onions! That's the secret.' Holes isn't the most brilliant movie of the year, but it is funny without being offensive, and sweet without being maudlin. Most of all, it goes further in capturing what it is like to be young without portraying it as too horrible or too saccharine. The bitter and the sweet together is the secret of Holes' success.

(Contains Spoilers)

The problems with this movie rank in the following order, going from greatest to least: Dramatic Direction, Story, Dialogue, Action Direction, and Sound. Besides the incredibly cliché direction (check out the camera pan from kissing lovers to a roaring fireplace), I found the movie to be in very bad taste. Besides the fact that the audience can never really get comfortable with the story, the characters often act as if they are in a different movie. While Bullseye (Colin Farrell) seems to be a comic-book version of Begbie from Trainspotting, Kingpin (Michael Clark Duncan) seems like he's right out of a Mary Kate and Ashley movie. When Elektra dies (or does she) I simply couldn't believe it. It seems as if the characters must die for the sake of the movie, not for the sake of justice. The symbolism in the movie is inverted to begin with, the devil fighting for justice and so on, but becomes increasingly more bizarre as the movie progresses. At one point Bullseye is shot through the hands and receives, what look like the wounds of Christ. This is so incredibly tasteless I couldn't help but wonder, `What the HELL where the filmmakers thinking?' The acting and the action are both incredibly bad, the former because these actors were left out to dry, the latter because the director is all wet.

This review contains plot spoilers, but, since the movie is 25 years old, this should not be too much of a problem.

Coming later than, and obviously depending on, movies like Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run bears all the marks of the sci-fi movies of the sixties and seventies. Here we find a distopian future, that bears more resemblance to Huxley than Orwell, where the citizens all must die at thirty, but enjoy pleasures unbounded before their fiery death in `Carousel.' If there is any `doublespeak' in the domed city it is that `renewal,' the process by which people are allegedly reborn, is a lie perpetrated to get the masses to accept their early death. Here we find the target of Logan's Run's satire, aimed not at traditional religion, which is targeted in Planet of the Apes, but rather the psuedo-mysticism that began popping up in the late sixties.

Of course, the lie of carousel does not work on everyone, and some dwellers of the domed city decide to make a break for it. The job of the Sandmen, then, is to hunt down and kill the runners. Logan 5 (Michael York) is a Sandman and in the first scene of the movie we get to watch him do his job with apparent glee. York's acting, while not pitch perfect, has the kind of liveliness you see in all the greats (Olivier, Welles, etc.). He performs admirably through his subsequent realizations. The high-concept pitch, of course, is that Logan 5, once a Sandman, is now required to locate and destroy Sanctuary by becoming a runner himself. His guide through all this is the strangely attractive, very sexy, Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter), whose unearthly voice compliments the movie's synthesized soundtrack. The two meet through some sort of service that matches up people in the mood for sex - which, one assumes, includes nearly all the people in the domed city. The two do eventually escape, and are followed by Logan's former partner, Francis 7, into the great outdoors. From here the movie declines in quality, relying on the blossoming love relationship, and the sight of the vine-covered Lincoln Monument, and the death of Francis, to carry the weight of the movie. Despite its lack of grace, the outdoor journey is genuinely inspiring, as the two discover the possibility of marriage, and the truth about ageing. In the end, Logan and Jessica return to the domed city (along with an old man (Peter Ustinov)) and proclaim the truth that one does not have to die. Michael York's speech here is so wonderfully over the top, that it makes me happy every time I see it. In the end, Logan and Jessica succeed, and the people in the domed city do go outside, which is a nice change from the disturbing ends most of these sort of movies have. This movie is definitely not one of the classics, but is has so many interesting moments that it is definitely worth a viewing.