by Daniel Pecoraro, Contributor

I’ve always been more of a nonfiction reader. This was especially the case as a young kid, where I was more inclined to read books about baseball and urban design than I was a novel. But Louis Sachar’s 1998 book Holes was an exception. The story of young Stanley Yelnats IV, whose “no good, dirty, rotten, pig-stealing great-great-grandfather” Elya brought a curse on the family, leaving his father unlucky in his work as an inventor and Stanley caught in a crime he didn’t commit. He’s sent to Camp Green Lake, where he and his fellow juvenile delinquents dig a hole each day to build character — and, unbeknownst to them, attempt to find the missing treasure left by 19th Century bandit Kissin’ Kate Barlow. 

Between the ages of eight and twelve I must have read Holes something like ten times (my brother, less of a keen reader, might have read it even more times in that span). I think the complexity of the plot and its resolution was what drew me in, the culmination of a multigenerational family story as told through a boys’ reformatory camp and a lot of holes in dirt.

I feel like I should have been in the prime demographic to see the adaptation of Holes when it debuted twenty years ago this month. I loved the book and was a fan of the Shia LaBoeuf–led Disney Channel series Even Stevens, so I should have been primed to see the film in which LaBoeuf made his above-the-title debut (he got an “and introducing” credit and everything!). But I didn’t see it in-theater (I’m guessing a combination of Passover, the Mets, the Arena Football League, and being nervous about the Iraq War got in the way), and by the time the DVD came around, I got a hold of the Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl books and it drew my attention away from the source material. Until I took this piece on for MovieJawn, I don’t think I had ever seen the film all the way through — just a few minutes here and there in Disney Channel reruns. 

So after this initial all-the-way-through rewatch, I can safely say: what a weird, trippy movie (for a kids’ movie, anyway) Holes is! I had so many questions throughout. Why were there so many slow motion reaction shots and crossfades? Why are the kids just eating tortillas at the crack of dawn before going out to dig their requisite hole per day? Why is Eartha Kitt playing a Latvian fortune teller? Why is there a “let’s remind folks of the plot of the movie” rap at the end (“Dig It” by “The D-Tent Boys,” aka the child cast of the film) nearly a decade after this genre peaked with Bobby Brown’s “On Our Own”? With one of the many final twists, was Jon Voight (as Mr. Sir) supposed to be in brownface the entire time?

While I’ll probably live with these thoughts for the rest of my days, Holes is still a fun film across its breezy two hours. The entire child cast — especially LaBoeuf as Stanley, Khleo Thomas (Hector Zeroni, aka Zero), Brenden Jefferson (X-Ray), Max Kasch (Zig-Zag), Byron Cotton (Armpit), and Miguel Castro (Magnet) — prove themselves to be a captivating bunch of ragtag kids out in the Texas desert. The adults are great, too, with the arc of Miss Katherine-turned-Kissin’ Kate (Patricia Arquette) and her star-crossed love affair with Sam (Dulé Hill) as an emotional crescendo for the film. (Explaining an early Jim Crow-era interracial romance and extralegal violence for kids is a tough hoop to jump through. Director Andrew Davis and Sachar, who wrote the screenplay, did so particularly well.) By the emotional family reunions at the film’s conclusion, I was tearing up (though admittedly for parent-child relationships on film, I’m an easy cry). And, aside from The D-Tent Boys’ lone single, the film has a surprisingly eclectic soundtrack, with selections from Eels, Shaggy, and Eagle-Eye Cherry. All in all, Holes still holds up twenty years later, and given recent proposals to close juvenile detention centers in Texas is worth a watch (or rewatch). Even after two decades, Holes still has an important, impactful, and occasionally zany story to tell.