bkoganbing Hoot is a pleasant and innocuous comedy about a trio of teens who save an owl nesting place from being bulldozed to make way for a fast food type pancake house. As if Florida didn't already have enough of them.The teens are Logan Lerman, Brie Larson, and Cody Linley. The characters seem to be borrowed from Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn. Well if the Magic Kingdom is going to borrow, borrowing from someone like Mark Twain is certainly a good idea.Lerman is a new kid in town who because of that becomes the target of the school bully. But when he's not dealing with that or when Ms. Larson isn't dealing with Eric Phillips the bully, he's gotten himself in their crusade to save some owls who have nested on the property the corporation wants to build on. This is by no means a new theme for Disney, as far back as Cesar Romero and Keenan Wynn played tycoons whose only interest is making money no matter what the cost.I like what Cody Linley did with his role. He's the barefoot kid just like Huckleberry Finn along the Mississippi only here its the sands of the Florida beaches. Hoot is nothing terribly special, but it is a pleasant 90 minutes viewing.

moonspinner55 Watching Disney's "Hoot", based on Carl Hiaasen's young adult novel, one's mind begins to wander early in the proceedings, conjuring up images of the casting process wherein presumably thousands of juvenile actors auditioned for the leading roles. If true, how then did they come up with the utterly talentless kid-performers seen here? Casting agents in Hollywood seem to be perpetually out-of-touch with reality; they overload films like "Hoot" with unnatural, exasperating, self-conscious young people who act as if they were being assigned the next sequel to "Home Alone". Eyeball-rolling high schooler, moved from Montana to Florida (an excuse to give us a nifty travelogue credits sequence!), is immediately picked on by bullies but fights back. His success gives him the courage (I presume) to track down a Tarzan-like older kid who runs like the wind and lives in the foliage just outside the country club; together, the two boys hope to save endangered owls who are burrowing on land designated for a new pancake restaurant. The picture is a series of bad ideas, misconceived sequences, and hopeless attempts at comedy while offering us a plastic kind of youthful conviction which was already molding over as far back as the 1950s. NO STARS from ****

dwpollar 1st watched 10/8/2008 - 4 out of 10(Dir-Will Shriner): So-so environmental movie about a wild child protecting a group of burrowing owls from getting bulldozed by a pancake house trying to break ground for their 100th restaurant. This movie was watchable for awhile but then kind of got high-and-mighty with it's environmentalism and became very predictable about halfway thru. The story revolves around a family moving into a new town in Florida and the son being mesmerized by a barefoot kid running alongside the school bus, obviously not attending school. We find out later he's kind of hiding from his parents so he won't get sent to military school and vandalizing the property where the pancake house is supposed to go in his spare time. There are a couple of side stories like a school bully picking on the new kid, and a bumbling cop, played by Luke Wilson, that has some funny moments. The main story line though revolves around three kids trying to influence a corporation to change their minds about where to place their business. The music, by Jimmy Buffet, doesn't help the movie and is mostly pretty lame -- Buffet actually also appears in a cameo role as a teacher. This is basically it for this movie. I'm sure that it can be enjoyed by some of the younger folk, but there's not enough quality behind it to keep most viewers involved for the whole 1 hour and a half. It probably would have been better as an afternoon kids special than a motion picture.

g-bodyl Hoot is a nice plain movie with a simple message. It seemed like that this film was for young children, but I know that adults will like this film. The storyline is pretty simple. A kid who moved to Florida must help a soccer jock and an outcast save burrowing owls from construction of a pancake house. The message in this film is big especially for animal activists and lovers. The message is about doing all you can to save endangered animals. The acting in this film is decent. All the three kids looked like they had good chemistry. The music is not too shabby. I liked Jimmy Buffet's songs in this film. Overall this is a good family film. I rate this film a 9/10.