Holes, Monster House, and how to make a good kids movie
When I was a kid I could watch a movie so many times in a row that I could quote it from memory, and did so with any film that caught my attention. Quotes from such disparate films as Monsters Inc. and The Bourne Identity would pop into my head in applicable situations, ready to lend a hand when other sources of wisdom failed me. I recently had the chance to re-watch two such films, 2003’s Holes and 2005’s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, as an adult and was surprised to find how similar the two films were once the credits rolled. I was also pleased to find that they may be two of the greatest kids movies ever made because they respect their audience, have things to say, are weird as hell, and are good films besides; we need to be making more of them.
Because two is such a lonely number I decided to watch 2009’s Coraline and 2006’s Monster House, a few more films that seemed to fit the running theme I was picking up on, and to see if they held up, and boy did they ever. These four films are some prime examples of exactly the kind of films that we don’t get enough of right now: weird, melancholy children’s films. Those pining for Westerns can look back to a time when 67 such films were released in the same year, but when searching for more movies like those mentioned above only a handful can be found. An obvious answer to this problem is to inform others about what makes these films special so I’ll give it a shot.
One of the many common threads in all of these stories is that they don’t shy away from depicting death if death is a risk. Each film explicitly states that death is part of the equation because they recognize that children are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. And though I didn’t realize it when I was younger the idea that people were making children’s movies that didn’t water down anything for me was so validating. There are also dots that the films allows the audience to connect as shown in the film Holes. Peaches and onions are the solutions to almost every problem in the film while most of the main characters are related or have crossed paths before the events of the movie even begin; few of the intricate interwoven plots points are explained using dialogue or heavy-handed visual cues. Instead, the pieces are laid out a few times and the audience is able to put them together on their own and that’s hard to find in any film, let alone a kids movie.
These films don’t just address their opinions the normal way either. None of them are simply about believing in yourself or trusting your family or that the answer was love all along. Coraline teaches us that not only can you be wrong, but sometimes you should probably take a second look at how you’re acting before you hurt too many people. The titular character is an awful little girl with very few redeeming qualities. Sure her parents are not very attentive and her neighbors are self-centered and weird, but that’s no excuse for being so impossibly rude to everyone around her. In the end she learns that things are not always as they seem and that sometimes things seem much worse than they really are. Many films teach morals such as these but few do so by showing that there are multiple sides to the lessons taught.
The “weird as hell” point is pretty apparent from just watching the trailers for these movies, but I think that it deserves delving into anyway. All four of these films are surreal to varying degrees, such as with Holes’ coincidence/curse logic, A Series of Unfortunate Events’ heightened reality with over the art direction and acting, Coraline’s shadow world, and Monster House’s omnipotent funhouse. They are all unique, intriguing, and made me feel weird as a kid. This mysterious x-factor may be something purposely crafted or it may be a happy accident, but I think it has something to do with an optimistic view of an exaggerated version of our own melancholic world. In every one of these movies things are bleak, but that’s no license to give up.
Finally, they’re just good films. All four of them have solid stories, acting, art direction, cinematography, and stellar scores (Holes and A Series of Unfortunate Events in particular). Sure A Series of Unfortunate Events is a bit overstuffed, Coraline is perhaps too bleak for its modern audience, Monster House is a bit crass, and Holes… well Holes is basically perfect. And that’s not to say that kids films have to be weird and dark to be good. I think that the only Pixar film to be counted among these would be the recent Inside Out and I adore almost everything from Pixar. There is just a distinctive and elusive quality to films like the four mentioned above that I think deserves to be more widely appreciated.
My basic point is that these films showed me things that few others did at a time in my life when I needed them. They show us how to treat others under truly difficult circumstances, that everyone is weird, and that being different is ok, and that if your uniqueness includes making others feel bad about themselves then maybe find another defining character trait. People say that life is dark and scary and difficult but these films show us that even though all of those things are definitely true, that it’ll be ok if we keep our wits about us. As Violet Baudelaire says, “There is always something.”
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