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HOLES

There’s no point in making strenuous objections to this leisurely, benign film for 11-year-old boys. It has a welcome contempt for authority that’s justified by the story, in which the wicked warden (Sigourney Weaver) of a juvenile correction center forces her charges to dig holes in the desert in the hope of recovering the spoils of a notorious 19th-century female outlaw. The film gets points for showing a mouth-to-mouth kiss between a black man and a white woman (the sympathetic outlaw, whose adventures are recounted in running flashbacks). Within the limits imposed by the script’s ban on ambiguity, the performances are mostly good, especially that of Jon Voight (disguised as Wayne Newton). But is it too much to wish that Holes had been made with a little more deviousness, a little less zeal in spelling out the obvious? There’s no possibility that any member of the audience, no matter how young, will miss any point. The tyranny exercised by director Andrew Davis is as total as that of his villains. (111 minutes)

BY CHRIS FUJIWARA

Issue Date: April 17 - 24, 2003
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