Movie Review / Rant - Hoot

yes, it's an old(er) movie.

Attention Hollywood Producers. It *IS* possible to make a movie starring kids which does not have adults who are assinine, unintelligent, incompetant, unsympathetic, unpresent, and clueless. Trust me, it really is.

Hoot: I'm not going to bother listing all the people in this, because most of them are one-flick wonders (except Luke Wilson) who you recognize but don't really know their names.

Roy (main kid), Beatrice (girl kid), and Mullet Fingers (other kid--and yes, that's seriously the name of the character) are out to save a field for burrowing owls. The owls are cute--I will give them that. And I will note too: I did not realize that there were owls that lived in burrows rather than trees.

The problem: you've got a corporate jerk face who knows about the endangered species and has tried to cover it up -- however, he's done a piss poor job of it!. I've worked for agencies which did environmental impact studies. I can tell you that the manner that this was done was NOT the correct process. Impact studies are submitted directly to the state agency, not through the company involved. And if there was a torn page in the report received, the agency would not just glibly move on without saying: "Hey, I need another copy of the report." (and no thinking company trying to cover this up would be keeping one SHOWING the torn out page on site. I mean...if you're going to cover it up, cover it up man!) Yes, our studies were given in draft form to the organization so they'd get an opportunity to respond, but we did not remove things because they didn't like the finding. So the bottom line: the permitting process by which the jerk companies got their authorization was falsely formed. They would not have been given a permit with an environmental impact study showing endangered species on site. (I know this: we had a similar issue with one that we did. In the case of ours, we had to do mediation by moving the species -- it was a moveable one. But we had to find a compatible habitat before we could move them. And it was expensive.) The state would not grant us permits until those endangered species were moved.

So right there, the movie falls off of its tracks.

Onto Mullet Fingers: Mullet Fingers is the step brother of Bridget, who knows where he is. He doesn't get along with his mom or his step dad (and this is a kid who seems pretty amiable, so it's not like he's a drugger kid or something). Mom shipped him to a military boarding school and he ran off about two weeks later. Yet....the school has never reported him missing! Excuse me? Are you serious? Missing kid from their role books and they do not report this to the parents? Are they trying to become the property of that kid's parents? I mean, I smell a serious lawsuit.

Roy's dad is Department of Justice. That's just a random, irrelevant factoid.

There is also a school bully who clearly beats on kids within the purview of the driver. Yet, when Roy fights back, HE is the one who is suspended from the bus. The bus driver (obviously from the filming) saw that the bully was choking Roy. Roy breaks the boy's nose. And she reports him. Okay, what planet is that bus driver NOT suspended on? And why do Roy's parents not report what ROY's version is to the school when he tells them why he punched out the bully and broke his nose? This is not exactly a kid who has been a problem child before, so why would they not take his side with the administration. Instead, he has to write an apology to the bully. Excuse me? That's lame as all get out.

The writing is horrendous. The plot development is horrendous. Luke Wilson is WASTED on this film.

The two pluses. Soundtrack is good and the owls are cute. Buy a Buffet CD and get a picture. You'll enjoy it a lot more.