The burrowing owl is an elusive creature. It makes its home in the abandoned dens of badgers and gophers and rarely comes out during the day.
That makes it difficult for bird watchers and even more difficult for filmmakers bent on using this tiny fowl as the hero of a family movie.
If you blink during Hoot, you might miss one of the six times the owls actually appear on screen.
That's a shame because they are really adorable, making it obvious why people would fight to preserve their natural habitats.
In Hoot, an aggressive pancake chain plans to build its 100th restaurant on a piece of Florida land that clearly should be preserved as an owl habitat.
The bad guy (Clark Gregg) is in cahoots with the town's mayor (Robert Wagner), who has conveniently forgotten the land is protected.
Only three teenagers give a hoot as to what will happen to the soon-to-be-homeless owls.
Sorry, folks, but these owls, sweet as they may be, are no Perry the Squirrel, Flipper the dolphin or Willy the whale, especially not in a film that's more about the humans than it is about them.
Hoot is based on a youth novel by Carl Hiaasen (who, ironically, wrote Demi Moore's Striptease).
His hero this time is Roy Eberhardt (Logan Lerman), who has just moved to Florida from Montana. He's an outsider at his school who makes friends with Beatrice (Brie Larson), the no-nonsense school soccer star, and her stepbrother, Mullet Fingers (Cody Linley).
They keep sabotaging the construction site, which brings a bungling cop named Officer Delinko (Luke Wilson) into their lives.
Wilson does as much as he can with the thin material he's given, getting some gentle laughs, but all the while setting up Delinko to be the one who will uncover the political corruption.
The young actors turn in solid, but not particularly exciting, performances.
Shriner honed his directing skills on episodes of Frasier, Everybody Loves Raymond and Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place -- and it shows.
He creates some charming moments and a few exciting ones, but he can't seem to tie them all together and sustain the pacing.
His cinematographer, Michael Chapman, does capture some spectacular vistas within the Florida Everglades and, in addition to starring as a science teacher, Jimmy Buffet supplies six songs, including his Floriday and a cover of Bruce Cockburn's Wondering Where the Lions Are.
Hoot is a movie that feels like a TV flick, but is still worth catching on the big screen.
It has some excellent lessons to teach about how we are robbing creatures of their habitats.
It also demonstrates how important friendship is and, through a rather obnoxious class bully (Eric Phillips), how not to treat the new kid on the block.
(This film is rated G)
