Holes was released in the United States on April 18, 2003, earning $71.4 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its cast, faithfulness to its source material, and sense of nostalgia.[1]
Plot
In Green Lake, Texas, the Yelnats family has been cursed to be unlucky, which they blame on their ancestor Elya's failure to keep a promise to fortune teller Madame Zeroni over a century earlier in Latvia. One day, Stanley Yelnats IV is wrongfully convicted of stealing a pair of sneakers donated to charity by baseball player Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston, and is sentenced to 18 months of hard labor at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention camp, in lieu of jail time.
The camp is in a dried lake bed where rain never falls and venomous yellow-spotted lizards proliferate. Stanley meets warden Louise Walker; her assistant, Mr. Sir; and camp counselor Dr. Steve Pendanski. Prisoners, known by their nicknames - including Zero, Zig-Zag, Armpit, Squid, X-Ray, and Magnet - dig holes in the desert daily, although they may earn a day off if they find anything interesting inside the holes. After Stanley finds a golden lipstick tube initialed K.B. and a fossil, he is accepted into the group and given the nickname Caveman. When Magnet steals Mr. Sir's bag of sunflower seeds, Stanley takes the blame and is taken to Walker's cabin. Inside, Stanley discovers old wanted posters and newspapers and realizes "KB" stands for Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow, a notorious outlaw his great-grandfather encountered. Walker assaults Mr. Sir for his irrelevant report and allows Stanley to return to work.
Camp Green Lake's history is revealed in a series of flashbacks as a flourishing lakeside community in the 19th century. Kate, then a school teacher, romantically bonds with Sam, an African-American onion merchant who helps repair her schoolhouse. When the wealthy Charles "Trout" Walker discovers the two kissing, he spreads the word out of jealousy, and the town's citizens burn down the schoolhouse and murder Sam. In retaliation, Kate becomes an outlaw, hunting down Walker's men and earning her nickname by kissing the men she killed. As her legend is established, Green Lake goes into decline due to the lake's sudden evaporation. One of Kate's victims is Elya's son Stanley Yelnats Sr., who is robbed of his chest of gold and left to fend for himself in the desert. Years later, Kate encounters the now-destitute Walkers; before allowing herself to be lethally bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard, she boasts neither Walker nor his descendants will find her buried fortune.
In the present, Pendanski mocks Zero, whose real name is Hector Zeroni, but the latter injures Pendanski and flees. After some deliberation, Stanley searches for Hector. The two have difficulty surviving in the desert without water. Eventually, Stanley carries the ailing Hector up the mountain, where they find a field of wild onions and a source of water, helping them regain strength; simultaneously, Stanley unknowingly fulfills his ancestor's promise to Madame Zeroni and breaks the curse. While camping on the mountain, Hector tells Stanley he stole Livingston's sneakers and threw them over the bridge to evade the police, only for them to inadvertently hit Stanley's head.
Returning to the camp, Stanley and Hector investigate the hole where Stanley found the lipstick and discover a chest before they are discovered by Walker, Mr. Sir, and Pendanski. They soon realize Walker, who is Trout's granddaughter, has been using the inmates to search for Barlow's treasure. The adults are unable to steal the chest from the boys, as the hole has swarmed with yellow-spotted lizards, which do not bite Stanley and Hector due to the onions they ate earlier. The puzzled adults wait for the yellow-spotted lizards to kill the boys. The next morning, the attorney general and Stanley's lawyer arrive, accompanied by a Texas Ranger; the chest Stanley found is discovered to have once belonged to his namesake great-grandfather. Walker, Mr. Sir, who is actually a paroled criminal named Marion Sevillo, and Pendanski, who is impersonating a doctor, are arrested. Stanley and Zero are released, and it rains in Green Lake for the first time in over a century.
The Yelnats family obtains the chest, which contains jewels, deeds, and promissory notes. They share this with Hector, who uses it to hire private investigators to find his missing mother, and both families live a life of financial ease as neighbors.
Director Andrew Davis chose to direct Holes to show he was capable of making more than action films such as The Fugitive and Collateral Damage.[4] He encouraged author Louis Sachar to participate in the production and adapt the novel into a screenplay.[4] To break down the novel's action into a film, Davis and Sachar storyboarded over 100 scenes on 3-by-5 note cards, each of which had specific time allotments. Sachar said Davis "went through and said, 'Now as you rewrite it, this card should take half a minute, this one should take three minutes, this one should take one minute, and so on.'"[4] Before Sachar was hired, Richard Kelly was given the job to write the screenplay. His draft diverged from the source material, and had a darker, post-apocalyptic take with sci-fi elements. Kelly stated he was naive and was told by the production staff that he was "insane" before being removed from the film.[5]
Holes was filmed in California over 10 weeks in the summer of 2002[6] on a $20 million budget.[1] When looking for a child actor to play Stanley, Davis asked for an actor like "a young Tom Hanks", and Shia LaBeouf was cast.[4] In the original book, Stanley is depicted as obese, shedding considerable weight as the book progresses. The filmmakers chose to drop this aspect from the movie, as they believed it would have been difficult to convincingly portray the weight loss in a live-action film.[4]
The film was shot in several locations, including Ridgecrest, California.[4] LaBeouf was simultaneously doing work for the Disney Channel show Even Stevens, and worked on the film after taping Even Stevens.[7] To show the seven kids' holes being dug gradually throughout the day, different "phases" were used, for each of which the seven holes were given different levels of depth. For the yellow spotted lizards, fourteen bearded dragons were used, four of which were used for the main parts, and the rest used as "background atmosphere lizards".[8]
The film is dedicated to Scott Plank, who appears in the film and died six months before its release.[9]
Holes was released on DVD and VHS on September 23, 2003.[11] The DVD version of the film consists of widescreen and fullscreen versions, being a THX certified release.[12]
Reception
Box office
Holes grossed $16.3 million in its opening weekend, finishing #2 at the box office behind Anger Management's second weekend.[13][14] It went on to gross a domestic total of $67.4 million and an additional $4 million in international revenue, totaling $71.4 million at the box office, against a $20 million budget, making the film a moderate financial success.[1] The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2003, and opened at #9.[15]
As of December 2003, the video sold 3.11 million copies earning a profit of over $56.2 million.[16]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 140 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Faithful to its literary source, this is imaginative, intelligent family entertainment."[17] On Metacritic, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has a 71 out of 100 rating, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[18] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[19]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film 3.5 of four stars and wrote, "Davis has always been a director with a strong visual sense, and the look of Holes has a noble, dusty loneliness. We feel we are actually in a limitless desert. The cinematographer, Stephen St. John, thinks big and frames his shots for an epic feel that adds weight to the story. I walked in expecting a movie for thirteen somethings, and walked out feeling challenged and satisfied. Curious, how much more grown up and sophisticated Holes is than Anger Management",[20] which was released the same month.
In April 2023, producer Mike Medavoy told Collider that Disney might be considering adapting Holes as a television series, adding, "I think it's a tribute to the material and a tribute to the people who made it."[28]
^ abcdefDebruge, Peter (April 18, 2003). "Dig Deeper". The Austin Chronicle. Archived from the original on February 10, 2023. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
