Roy (Logan Lerman) transfers to a Florida middle school. For reasons explained far, far away from the script, he becomes obsessed with a barefoot kid named "Mullet Fingers" (Cody Linley). Soon, Roy is hanging out with Mullet and Mullet's stepsister (Brie Larson) as they engage in cute little acts of eco-terror to keep a pancake house from being erected over the nest-holes of endangered burrowing owls.
We're asked to root for these idiots as they pull up surveyor stakes, put a crocodile in an outhouse, spray-paint a patrol car, release cottonmouth snakes to scare off guard dogs, present false information during a hospital visit, flee the five-oh, vandalize bulldozers and assault the pancake-house CEO (Clark Gregg) -- a man so cartoonishly nasty, he makes these schmucks look like the good guys.
And then, like three-fourths of the way through the film, it occurs to the kids to dig up an environmental report and call an on-site press conference that the entire town gleefully attends. Which is maybe something the kids should have tried before unleashing the poisonous snakes, don'cha think? . . .
And, worst of all, no one really learns anything. The film's final scene finds Roy and Mullet looking at a sign announcing a condo construction site. Their eyes gleam wickedly. It's meant to be funny -- but I couldn't help thinking they were figuring out where to plant the pipe bombs.
11 hours ago
2 comments:
There are motherf---n' snakes in this motherf---n' pancake house.
Ralphie, I salute you.
I haven't read Hoot, but it's typical of Hiassen in some ways to go completely overboard into revenge fantasies. Sometimes, he's just stone hilarious, sometimes the sadism makes you get kind of creeped out.
I noticed your boy Erasmus had a similar objection to David Liss's new book, although that was animal rights, not ecology...
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