THESE KIDS GIVE A 'HOOT' - AND SO WILL YOU.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

A modern-day Huck Finn story filled with an array of kooky characters and bizarro situations that you'd expect from its South Florida setting, ``Hoot'' is a modest hoot, but enjoyable all the same. The film faithfully adapts Carl Hiaasen's first young-adult novel, keeping intact a world where a Jimmy Buffett seems perfectly in place playing a gonzo T- shirt-wearing middle-school science teacher who bids students a cheerful ``manana'' on his way to catch a few waves before paper-grading time.

Buffett's presence, as well as nods to Hiaasen's late pals Hunter S. Thompson and Warren Zevon (Buffett can be heard singing ``Werewolves of London'' on the soundtrack), make ``Hoot'' very much a piece of the author's work. When one of the movie's young adults laments about South Florida, ``Ever since I was little, I've been watching this place disappear,'' you have, in essence, the core message of Hiaasen's fine career in journalism and novels.

Sometimes that message is delivered with sadness, sometimes with outrage. ``The idiots in this town won't give a dang. They're too excited about having a stupid pancake house.'' Like the previous broadside, that line is spoken by the mysterious ``Mullet Fingers'' (Cody Linley), a blond-haired boy first seen running like the wind.

Where is the kid headed so fast? Why does ``soccer jock'' Beatrice (Brie Larson) seem so protective of him? And does any of it have to do with the vandalism at the work site of a proposed pancake chain restaurant?

Would the answers to any of these questions be easier if you knew that the construction site of the proposed Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House (fronted, of course, by a B-actress playing a grandmotherly type) contained the burrows of a local population of adorable, endangered owls?

Young Roy (Logan Lerman) puts the puzzle pieces together, evading misguided and/or clueless grown-ups - among them, an enjoyably dim local cop (Luke Wilson, finding just the right tone) whose heart is in the right place - in the process. It's good fun - kind of like Encyclopedia Brown (a Florida native himself) by way of Margaritaville. And for a family movie, that's pretty gonzo.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

HOOT - Three stars

(PG: brief language.)

Starring: Luke Wilson, Logan Lerman, Brie Larson.

Director: Wil Shriner.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

In a nutshell: Faithful, fun adaptation of Carl Hiaasen's young-adult novel about three kids looking to save some owls. It's ``Encyclopedia Brown'' by way of Margaritaville.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

When Roy Eberhardt (Logan Lerman) learns that a pancake-house construction project will threaten a population of burrowing owls, he plans a way to protect them in ``Hoot.''