Review of Holes (2003) by Jesse O — 19 Sep 2015

Kinda surprised that I waited over a decade before I watched this film. Not that it's a great film or anything, I may have thought it was better had I watched it closer to the actual time the film came out, but it is what it is.

I will say, however, that the film is certainly not what I expected. Though, to be fair, I had no idea what the film was about prior to watching it. Like I knew the kids dug holes and everything, but everything surrounding that I had no knowledge of.

But it plays out nicely and I do like how they incorporate flashbacks to tell the story of past Yelnats, Katherine Barlow and the current day Stanley, who's stuck at a detention camp, were they dig the holes everyday as a supposed character building exercise, for a crime he did not commit.

At first the flashbacks were a little bit jarring because I literally had no idea what role they were meant to be play, so they were a little annoying because I'd have rather been watching the current Stanley doing his thing at the detention camp.

At first I thought the flashbacks were simply filler and sometimes to give a bit of background into Stanley's family, but it turns out that it's all pretty much connected and absolutely necessary in order to tell the story the film wants to tell and how modern day Stanley redeems himself, and his family's name, for this curse that has been in their family for several generations now.

With that said, I still don't think the film goes into great detail in any of the flashbacks, so what you get is essentially the really basic stuff necessary to have an understanding of what's going on.

Don't get me wrong, it's good and I really like that sort of interconnected stuff where everything has a point and purpose into how the story ends up playing out, but the flashbacks themselves are still not that great, to be honest.

The best parts of the film are still bak at the detention camp and seeing how Stanley finds his way in the camp and how he fits in to a group of boys that have already been there for a really long time.

It, of course, starts off contentiously. But Stanley eventually starts earning their respect. You've seen it before. Though the highlight of the film would definitely be Stanley's friendship with Hector.

It's not as sentimental as one would expect, so that's a good thing. The acting is actually really good, so no problems on that end. Strong cast top-to-bottom. Like I said, the film doesn't really go into as much detail into any of the stories, both flashbacks and modern, but I still think that this movie is quite good.

It's funny and it's smart. That's not something that you can say about a lot of these types of films. Solid Netflix watch here.