Hoot

When I first started seeing trailers for Hoot at the movie theater two years ago, I told my son we would go see it. Somehow the movie came and went and we never had a chance to watch it at the theater. It recently showed up on HBO, so my son and I had a chance to finally see it. The movie was good, but I'm glad I didn't pay to see it at the theater.

This movie has been done many times in many different ways. It was a simple tale of empowered kids making a difference. A young man moves from Montana to Florida. He becomes involved with two new friends in a plot to stop a fast food chain from building a restaurant at a location where a protected species of owls live.

The writing in this movie was actually pretty good. Although the plot line has been done before, the dialogue was interesting and the sub-plots were developed enough to make them interesting and not just distracting. The conservation twist in this film is interesting, although the corporate entity was overly stereo-typed. As is common with this type of film, there are clear lines between the good guys and the bad guys and this sometimes makes important characters one-dimensional. The writers did a good job of developing a few of the peripheral characters as well as the main character. The plot is not overly complicated but is done well. The screenplay was adapted by Wil Shriner (who also directed) from a novel written by Carl Hiaasen. An interesting note about Hiaasen, who has succeeded in writing an interesting children's tale...his other novel was Striptease.

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