I can make Brother Bear sound awful just by giving a synopsis. How's this: A man kills a bear out of a misguided desire for revenge, so the Spirits of the Dead transform him into a bear, in which form he adopts a talkative young bear cub and learns a "valuable lesson about life". The really surprising thing is not that this is a decent movie, but that its well-wrought story is easily the best thing about it. Despite the fact that the Spirits of the Dead are free to work miracles, there are two significant real deaths. Nobody is resurrected; nobody is presumed dead only to later turn out to be alive. There are no cop-outs. No gratuitous additions, either, with the possible exception of the two scrawny-looking moose with Canadian accents - and who'd want to get rid of them? And while the animation may not be Disney's best (nothing wrong with it, you understand; it just doesn't dazzle us), the late Neolithic setting is beautifully presented. There's nothing to object to but the Phil Collins songs. Sadly, this may be the second last Disney feature cartoon ever released. Disney's animation studio has been continuously producing animation since 1928 and continuously producing features since the late 1940s. See one of them while you still can.

Stanley Yelnats IV (LaBeouf) has a lot to cope with. A recent misdemeanor (which he, of course, didn't commit) has landed him in a desert detention camp, where the warden (Weaver) has come up with an unusual punishment - every day, every boy must dig a new hole, five foot deep, five foot wide. What connection does all this have to the Yelnats family curse, or the legendary bandit queen, Kissin' Kate Barlow (Patricia Arquette)?

A decidedly strange adventure, Holes manages a complicated story with style and distinction. One review has described it as "If David Lynch directed The Shawshank Redemption for kids", and, if that combination sounds irresistible to you, then you might want to get stuck into Holes (no, I make no apologies for the bad pun. Here's a few more: It's a film with depth. It's a hole lot of movie. You'll really dig it. It's hole-ly likable. There's nothing empty about it. All in all, pretty hole-some. There, done now).