Holes: Critic Reviews

Honoring the literary ground beneath it, spotted yellow lizards and all, the movie Holes is easy to dig.

One of the few recent movies I have seen that plunged me into that rare, giddy state of pleasurable confusion, of not knowing what would happen next, which I associate with the reading and moviegoing experiences of my own childhood.

The movie pays homage to the book by preserving its potency and building upon its strong foundation. It's hard to imagine a reader who wouldn't approve.

A wonderfully dark fairy tale.

One can't help but feel thankful that the movie doesn't always go the expected route, that the characters have a little more depth to them than average, and that the complexity, which is the movie's basic weakness, is also its fundamental virtue.

Readers familiar with the book may negotiate the film's antic crosscutting, but newbies will need to pop a Dramamine before the lights dim.

Brims with storytelling flourishes and gently deployed life lessons that even accompanying adults may dig.

A dense yarn with a range of humor, imagination and emotions as wide as the desert floor upon which it is set.

At the least, it's original.

This movie, if it is as successful as it deserves to be, might just open slapstick-happy moviemakers' eyes to the idea that kids will flock to a story that explores dark issues.

That rare thing, a movie that will genuinely appeal to just about everyone in a family, though it emphatically is not the soppy pap that conventionally passes as a 'family film.'

I walked in expecting a movie for thirteensomethings, and walked out feeling challenged and satisfied.

The movie is all over the place, jumping around in time, place and tone.

The film's fidelity to the plot and tone of the book is a credit to [Sachar and Davis].

Fills a hole in the genre by not treating kids with kid gloves.

This is the sort of family film people keep wishing Hollywood would make. Well, they made it. Go see it.

An overly long, unwieldy movie.

Suffers even more than the Harry Potter films from a compulsion to be faithful to the source material, including cramming in a head-spinning assortment of characters and subplots.

The smartest, funniest kids' movie since Spy Kids.

Crazy as it is, Holes could be the Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory of 2003.

A movie that feels a bit like digging a hole in the ground -- an exercise that may build character but doesn't seem to accomplish much else.

It's smart, strange, unpredictable, and defies the formulas that typically define this sort of motion picture.