Based on the hugely successful award-winning novel for young adults by Louis Sachar (who also wrote the screenplay), this Disney adaptation is lighter and more bland than it should be. But its essential message - that despair and deprivation can be overcome - is a welcome inspirational one considering its eccentric circumstance. Shia LaBeouf plays Stanley Yelnats, who believes that generations of his family were cursed long ago by the mysterious Madame Zeroni (Eartha Kitt). He's accused of theft and sentenced to a juvenile detention centre, Camp Green Lake, in the Texan desert. There, Mr Sir (Jon Voight) makes the youngsters dig accurately shaped holes "to build character" and is himself in awe of the fearsome warden (Sigourney Weaver), who paints her fingernails with snake venom. Flashbacks introduce outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow (Patricia Arquette), while in the present LaBeouf discovers the real reason for the incessant hole-digging. Judged objectively, the situation couldn't be bleaker, but director Andrew Davis's whimsical tone sugars the patent bitterness.

After being wrongfully convicted for stealing a pair of shoes, Stanley Yelnats is sent away to Camp Green Lake, a boys detention facility where inmates are forced to dig holes all day in the hot desert sun as a form of character building. As he endures the brutal routine, Stanley begins to uncover a hidden truth behind the camp—one that connects to a dangerous secret and his family’s history.