This Disney boy buddy movie targets that awkward age 11 to 13 pubescent audience with surprisingly mature results.
Based on Louis Sachar's multi-award winning novel, its excellent ethnically representative young cast may be called names like 'ZigZag' and 'BarfBag' and never swear beyond a PG-acceptable 'you cow turd' but they're way more realistic than the usual clean-teen types who Fame-dance their way out of Hollywood central casting.
Dogged by a family curse started when his great-greatgrandfather stole a pig from a Latvian fortune teller (Eartha Kitt), gangly teen Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf) is sentenced for a crime he didn't commit (stealing trainers).
Wagonned off to a juvenile boot camp in the desert, he spends each day digging a hole in the dust in order to 'build character'. There's a lot to unpack here - real-life themes of mixed-race relationships and illiteracy jostle with fairy-tale elements.
But The Fugitive director Andrew Davis is more than up to the task. A bizarre but beautiful line-up of grown-ups, including Henry 'the Fonz' Winkler and Sigourney Weaver as the Warden (a Texan hellcat with rattle-snake venom nail-polish), will keep adults entertained.
Ultimately it all ends up in once-upon-a-time fantasy land, but there's a lot more depth than you might expect in them tharr holes...
