Saturday, May 27, 2006

Holes the movie

When I was raiding the library for books as usual this morning, I spotted the Holes movie, based on Louis Sachar's excellent book, Holes, so I snagged it as I've been wanting to watch it ever since I read the book, following advice from fellow children's literature Bloggers. Fortunately, because it is two and half months since I read the book, I don't remember all the small details, so I was able to watch and enjoy the film for its own sake, instead of picking up on everything they had left out or added to the movie (although, I'm sure Stanley Yelnats is fat in the book !) For me, this is the best way to view a film of a book - with a reasonable interval between reading a book and viewing the film (not a few days after finishing the book, as I did with I Capture the Castle !)

I've mentioned before that I have difficulty watching movies based on books, particularly if I know a book well; I think it's because I'm such a word-oriented person that a film version of a book, by its very nature a visual medium, is always going to be hard pressed to match my reading experience (although seeing a movie before reading the book on which it's based worked well for me with regard to the movie and book (by Joanne Harries) of Chocolat).

So those of you who mentioned you hadn't seen the film of Holes, I can recommend it. The historical scenes are intercut nicely with the present-day scenes, and Shia LaBeouf (as Stanley) and Khleo Thomas (as Hector "Zero" Zeroni) are very good in their roles.

4 comments:

Camille said...

My oldest entling had never seen Holes so we watched it this past weekend. I have read the book and seen the movie before but I always forget details so I was impressed all over again by how enjoyable the story and the acting was. Did you know that Sachar had a cameo in the movie? He was the bald man who comes up to Sam and is advised to use onion cream on his head so his hair will grow.

Michele said...

No I didn't (although I've not watched all the extras yet)! Thanks for sharing that snippet Camille ! I'm really glad I've seen the movie - and that it turned out to be as enjoyable as the book (which is lurking about on my Amazon wishlist right now.)

Kelly said...

I haven't seen the movie, but, now, I think I'm going to have to!

Michele said...

Well Kelly, if you like the book, I think you'll like the movie. The fact that I'm fairly vociferous in my condemnation of poor movie adaptations of favourite books, yet thought this was a good adaptation is probably a good point in favour of the movie (insofar as you wish to trust my judgement, of course !) It's probably worth renting it, at the very least, to see whether you enjoy it too.