Hoot

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Owls)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

Not Just Feathers!

Walden Media keeps right on proving that they know how to back the winners! The latest offering from the group who brought us Holes and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, is called Hoot and families will love it.

Carl Hiassen wrote a youth novel based loosely on his childhood in Florida and Jimmy Buffett’s teenaged daughter liked it enough to pester dad about getting it made into a movie. Buffett bought the rights, met and became friends with Hiassen whom he united with Wil Shriner (director) and Frank Marshall (producer), and Hoot was born. The goal of the entire team was to produce a family-friendly movie that was enjoyable while having substance and a message. Score!

The message, plain and simple, is that everyone, no matter what size or age or species, has the right to have a place on this earth. Everyone and everything in all creation has a purpose and is important to the good of the whole. Something or someone destroyed sends out a ripple that affects much more than the moment in time when the destruction occurred. Young people should be encouraged to take part in the life of their community and look for opportunities to serve.

Running parallel in the movie are the stories of two beleaguered creatures—the burrowing owl whose habitat is about to be destroyed for the sake of a new pancake house and Roy Eberhardt (Logan Leman), the new kid who has just moved from Montana to Florida and is being bullied relentlessly by Dana Matherson (Eric Phillips) who doesn’t think “Cowgirl� has a right to exist. As did the movie Aquamarine that came out earlier this year, Hoot portrays teenagers as human beings with brains and a genuine desire to make a difference that counts.

While riding the school bus one morning, Roy sees a barefoot boy running alongside and feels driven to discover who he is. He has a number of mishaps along the way and has to constantly deal with Dana who would prefer to bash his head in and leave him in a pile on the bus. A girl named Beatrice (Brie Larson), who is nicknamed Beatrice the Bear because she is so tough, rescues Roy a number of times and eventually reveals that she is the stepsister of the running boy whose name is Mullet Fingers (Cody Linley). Mullet Fingers does not attend school and has been kicked out of the house by Beatrice’s stepmother who is his biological mom. In hiding out and providing for himself, Mullet Fingers has discovered the plight of the burrowing owls and is determined to stop the pancake house corporation from bulldozing over them to build their new restaurant. Roy, Beatrice, and Mullet Fingers team up to save the owls.

Mullet Fingers has been running a one-boy campaign of the annoying mischief type of vandalism—letting the air out of truck tires, putting alligators in the porta-potties, pulling up the surveying stakes every time they are placed, collecting poisonous snakes and releasing them into the compound. He isn’t really hurting anybody or anything, but he is messing with the property of others and producing an atmosphere of potential harm. Roy keeps bringing this to his attention and tries to get him to move in a more Ghandi-esque direction that doesn’t involve trespassing or inevitable escalation into something that could be deemed a felony. This is one of the best things about the movie. Never is it assumed or implied that Mullet Fingers’ defense of the owls is wrong, but his methods are clearly not condoned. There is a strong, strong message to teens to use intelligence to fight for a cause and a powerful statement in support of the ability of young people to make a real difference.

Roy is the foil to Mullet Fingers. It is he who investigates the company and discovers that they have lied about an environmental impact study. All it took to give Roy the courage he needed was the empowerment that comes from key adults who believed in him and allowed him the freedom to pursue the answers. However, it is never assumed that Roy will be successful. In fact, he is cautioned that he probably will fail because the big guy is often the winner and this is not a “happily ever after� world a great percentage of the time. But realistically, “Sometimes Good Guys Win� (the movie’s theme song written by Buffett).

Jimmy Buffett and his friends have really accomplished their goal. All men with children, they were tired of sitting through movies that were safe for their kids to view but nothing but drivel for adults—“mind-numbing movies� is what they called them in the live feed interview after the screening I attended. It was very obvious from the responses to the questions from the audience, that these four men—Shriner, Buffett, Hiassen, and Marshall—will continue to collaborate on additional films that have moral value and spiritual truth clothed in an entertaining, generation-crossing medium. That is, if Hoot is well received. It deserves to be.

If you’re still not sold… the soundtrack is wonderful, the cinematography gorgeous and brilliant, and Luke Wilson as the bumbling Officer Delinko is a hoot—Oops!

— Overview