Some Secrets Are Too Big To Keep Hidden.

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Khleo Thomas, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson,  Henry Winkler, Patricia Arquette

DML Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ - good

"If you forget to come back for Madame Zeroni, you and your family will be cursed for always and eternity!" - Madam Zeroni

Why watch this? A wonderful, creative Disney film that plays surprisingly poignant and mature.

Plot Summary: Fourteen-year-old Stanley Yelnats IV is wrongfully convicted of stealing a famous baseball player's shoes and is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention camp in a desolate Texas desert. Instead of a lake, the camp is a dried-up lake bed where Stanley and other boys are forced to dig holes in the scorching heat each day, supposedly to "build character". Stanley soon discovers that the cruel Warden and her staff have a hidden agenda: they are secretly searching for something valuable buried beneath the dried lake bed...

Dad's Preview: My children read the book Holes in elementary school. When the film was released I expected a kid's movie. What I found was an interesting, layered, quasi-gem. The telling of the story uses flashbacks to three inter-connected past events that tie into the current day plot. This dusty film, laced with superb performances, plays like a modern fairytale.

Walt Disney Pictures, Walden Media, Phoenix Pictures Chicago Pacific Ent.;
Buena Vista Pictures Dist.