Our Rating: 3.00
Call it “praising with faint damns,” but one would rather see a nation of impressionable kids lining up for this quirky literary adaptation than for most of the tripe they’re fed. A hint of Wes Anderson permeates the story of the oddball Yelnats family, whose scion Stanley (Shia LeBeouf) is falsely convicted of sneaker theft and sent to a comically brutal work camp for troubled youth. What he finds there — and what he learns about his past — imparts a healthy suspicion of adult authority. Still, a crucial backstory that explains Stanley’s “cursed” familial legacy seems whittled down to the core as the overlong picture emphasizes arid and redundant scenes of hard labor.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2003.