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Friday, May 5, 2006
The kids rule the roost in 'Hoot'
Luke Wilson gets top billing in this young-adult adventure with an eco-awareness message but plays second fiddle to a trio of junior high kids who band together to save a burrowing owl breeding ground from being bulldozed by a pancake-house franchise.
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View all photosYoung Roy (Logan Lerman) is a cowboy swept from the plains of Montana to Coconut Cove, a small Florida coast town, by Dad's latest transfer. It's his sixth school in eight years. Fitting in is hard enough without the nickname "Cowgirl" and being stalked by a towering porcine bully with the brains of a mollusk.
"Mullet Fingers" (Cody Linley), a modern day Huck Finn turned barefoot eco-warrior, and tough-girl soccer jock Beatrice "the Bear" (Brie Larson), are an odd couple on a mission to save an endangered species from the bulldozers. They bring out the Tom Sawyer in Roy when he joins their mission.
Based on the Newbery-winning young-adult book by Carl Hiaasen, the Miami crime reporter turned novelist better known for his black-humored crime fiction, the adaptation is rudimentary but generally effective.
The adults are one-dimensional at best and ineffectual by definition; Roy's dad could have been played by a cardboard cutout with a pullstring. The rapacious corporate villain (Clark Gregg) actually cackles as he blasts underground owl nests with a fire extinguisher.
Luke Wilson mellows things out as Coconut Cove's answer to Barney Fife, a laid-back cruiser cop whose brain is idling but whose heart is in the right place.
The kids have good chemistry, there's some fun oddball humor stuck in around the slapstick, and the gorgeous photography of the Gulf Coast beaches, waterways and wildlife brings their mission to life.
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