"Hoot" the Movie! Coming Soon!

Something tells me my blog is about to get a rash of hits looking for something I ain't got.

Update May 5:
Okay, then.
Welcome visitors to Hootsbuddy's Place, with nothing in common with the movie other than the name. Thanks for stopping by.

NY Times is a registration site, but the cost is zero.
Here is the link to the NY Times review.
It should be good for a week or two, but after that I think it goes behind the paid subscriber wall.

This sweet-natured but plodding adaptation of a young-adult novel by Carl Hiaasen could have used a little less broad satire of corporate greed and a few more, well, owls. The critters peep from their burrows for only a few brief moments, whetting the young audience's appetite for a nature film that never emerges.

What "Hoot" does get right is locale. The director Wil Shriner, a Florida native, captures the laid-back mood of a Gulf Coast beach town, the kind of place where a
middle-school science teacher (the musician Jimmy Buffett, who also produced the film) wears shorts so he can go surfing after school, and dismisses class with the word "mañana."

"Hoot" is rated PG for what the press notes call "mild bullying and brief language." This objectionable content must be mild and brief indeed, because it passed this reviewer by entirely.

Readers rate the film four out of five stars.
I'm no expert but I heard the other day that there is something called a "burrowing owl," perhaps also an endangered species like the famous spotted owl. From the trailer, this seems to be the critter referred to in the film's title.

Link here to the book at Amazon.
Reviews here are good. If you wade past the hype you might find a review or two by real readers who actually read the book and wrote something not intended to pump sales but to let other readers know whether or not they enjoyed the book.

Seems like the burrowing owl, also called miniature owl, is a California bird.