Holes Movie Analysis

Receiving a 5/5 stars from http://commonsensemedia.org can be viewed as a major accomplishment, therefore it is no surprise Louis Sachar's Novel "Holes" was made into a movie. However Andrew Davis made some interesting variations on how he told the story. In my opinion the biggest differences where Stanley's appearance, Sam's death, and Mr. Sir's role. At first these may appear to be accidents but they are there for very specific reasons, they are there because the director targets your eyes, and ears however the director targets your emotion and imagination.

The biggest and most obvious
Difference was Stanley's appearance. In the novel Stanley is obese and not very strong Louis Sachar describes him like "he was overweight and the kids at
In the movie Kate and Sam where caught kissing by Trout and later when he was trying to row his boat away but Trout catches up with his boat and it shows Trout's silhouette pull out a rifle and a loud gun shot is heard as Sam's silhouette fall down (Davis,2003). In the novel once Sam is caught him and Kate attempt to row his boat away when Trout runs them over and shoots Sam while he's under water. After Sam does Trout has to drag Kate out the water because she wanted to die with Sam (Sachar pg.111, 114). The director shows it like this because his job is to target your eyes and ears and he does so with the gun shot and the silhouettes. Another reason her presented it like this is because this movie is generally for kids and his scene let's the watcher know that Sam is dead without the ratings going to pg-13. The author chose to tell it like that because he targets your emotion and imagination by letting you imagine all the pain and suffering Kate went through and it gives the reader a greater understanding of why she became kissing Kate Barlow. For those reasons the author and director had different ways of telling you Trout killed
Sir. In the movie Mr. Sir was a goofy looking guy and in one scene you see him doing a weird cowboy dance after he shoots a yellow spotted lizard. Another example of him being goofy is when Stanley steals the truck he chases after it and falls face first into a deep hole (Davis, 2003). In the novel Mr. Sir's role is to show how horrible camp green lake is. An example of him doing horrible things is when instead of giving Stanley water he pours it onto the ground. Another example of him being cruel is when Louis Sachar wrote "he brought his tray to the table. Behind him, a boy from one of the other tents said, "Hey what happened to your face". There was a crash. Stanley turned to see Mr. Sir holding the boy's face against the oatmeal pot" (Sachar, pg104). The director chose to make Mr. Sir goofy and less violent because his version of holes is a funny kid-friendly story. Louis Sachar chose to make him a violent cruel man because it makes the reader feel sympathetic toward Stanley which gives them a greater connection to him. These are different because the movie is rated PG and if there was a scene where the kid gets half his face burned the movie would be PG-13 or