Review by Neil Pasricha

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The trailer for Holes introduced me to yet another film that, in direct opposition to every guess one might make from the title, isn't actually pornography. Given that Holes stars the leathery Jon Voight and a cast of young boys, this is probably for the best. All the same, it's discouraging that Hollywood continues to use these sorts of underhanded bait-and-switch tactics to lure in gullible pornography afficionados. Read the titles from these other 2003 Hollywood releases and see what you think: A View from the Top. Rugrats Go Wild. What a Girl Wants. The Italian Job. The Human Stain. Granted, The Human Stain doesn't sound like particularly good porno. But it still sounds like some kind of porno—perhaps the kind that has everyone arguing about the drycleaning bill afterwards.

Holes tells us the story of an insatiable bisexual model named Pandora and her erotic odyssey of explicit sexual exploration. However, in a truer, not-lying sense, it actually tells us the story of an awkward teen named Stanley who, like anyone who finds themselves in a theater watching Holes, is cursed.

"All my life," says Stanley, "I seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Immediately after this proclamation, Stanley is nailed in the back of the head by a pair of tennis shoes that fall from the sky. While I think most of us are prepared to accept that this is indeed some pretty bad luck, the scene raises some questions that the trailer doesn't seem prepared to answer:

1. Why would tennis shoes drop out of the sky?

Because, according to the trailer, a relative of Stanley's stole a pig a long time ago and now Stanely has a 150-year old curse on him. The curse, however, is apparently only effective in the exclusive province of tennis shoes dropping out of the sky and hitting the cursed in the head. As curses go it's a little offbeat, and doesn't have the effect that, say, steak knives or vials of dysentery dropping from the sky might. Still, one has to give full points for orginality. Steal a pig, tennis shoes doomed to fall on you for 150 years. It would actually be poetic justice, if we were talking about really bad poetry. At any rate, why Stanley doesn't simply keep an umbrella around at all times or learn to step out of the way when he hears fast-approaching whistling sounds is unclear. However, I put forward that repeated shoe-blows to the head have given him enough brain damage to render him an idiot.

2. If tennis shoes dropped out of the sky, what are the chances they would even hit a person?

Highly unlikely. But let's not forget the tennis shoe curse. The logical explanation here is that the shoes can think, and are aiming for Stanley.

3. Okay, well why does Stanley fall over? Who falls over when they get hit with shoes?

Stanley does.That's why the curse is so well tailored to him. Anyway, it's not important. Someone cursed him and it sucks and now he's got shoes coming at him from every which way. Let's move on.

Stanley is eager to get rid of the curse, even though he seems to suffer no ill effects from the shoe-braining, so we're left to assume he just doesn't like free shoes. It's his business, I suppose. Stanley is then packed off to a camp in the desert somewhere, and he starts digging a bunch of holes until he finds a thing, which can then be given to somebody else, which will then remove the curse. At first glance Stanley seems to do just this, because everyone looks happy and is jumping around in the last half of the trailer, so there's the movie.

This all seems pretty predictable though, doesn't it? Disney's a smart company—they wouldn't just give away a movie's entire plot in a trailer. Maybe there's a twist ending? Okay, let's go with that. So based on the images shown in the trailer, here are some possible twist endings:

• Throughout the entire movie there isn't a single shot of Stanley's feet. Then at the end of the movie, when Stanley finds out he's not cursed anymore and he's in the middle of hugging all his friends, the camera slowly pans down to reveal that Stanley has no shoes. Just then, someone asks Stanley if he wants to go play tennis. Stanley cries to the Heavens at ironic fate.
  
  
• Throughout the entire movie there isn't a single shot of Stanley's feet. Then at the end of the movie, just when Stanley finds out he's not cursed anymore and he's in the middle of hugging all his friends, the camera slowly pans down to reveal that Stanley has feet made of SOLID GOLD! Stanley and his friends all laugh and check their reflections in Stanley's feet as the credits roll.



• Throughout the entire movie there isn't a single shot of Stanley's feet. Then at the end of the movie, just when Stanley finds out he's not cursed anymore and he's in the middle of hugging all his friends, the camera slowly pans down to reveal that Stanley has feet made of SOLID GOLD! Stanley's friends promptly tie and gag Stanley, bend him over a tree stump and saw off his feet with a hacksaw.
  
  
• Throughout the entire movie there isn't a single shot of Stanley's feet. Then at the end of the movie, just when Stanley finds out he's not cursed anymore and he's in the middle of hugging all his friends, the camera slowly pans down to reveal that Stanley has feet made of MATURE GOVERNMENT T-BILLS! Stanley does some quick math and realizes that the maturity value is nearly worthless given the low interest rate at the time of investment. He dejectedly tosses his calculator into a cactus field as the credits roll.

Well, maybe there is no twist ending. Maybe Stanley does find the thing someone told him to find and gets uncursed with the help of his wacky pals at the camp. Who knows? The trailer takes great pains to underline the fact that Holes was originally a book, meaning the book must have been spectacularly popular, or why mention it? So maybe everyone's clamoring to see the cinematic retelling of their favorite story about a kid who gets hit by shoes and then digs holes in the desert until he finds a thing that makes the shoes stop hitting him. I mean, how much did Kangaroo Jack make in theaters? I'd buy it.