Your child can learn more about burrowing owls in 90 seconds on the Internet than in 90 minutes of watching "Hoot."

Glenn Watson, New Line Productions photos Jimmy Buffett as Mr. Ryan in the mystery adventure "Hoot." Click photo for larger image. "Hoot" Rating: PG for mild bullying and brief language. Starring: Logan Lerman, Luke Wilson. Director: Wil Shriner. "Hoot" Web site Post-Gazette Family Film Guide review of "Hoot" An interview with Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, appears in Sunday's On the Go section.

No one expects -- or wants -- a movie theater to double as a classroom, but "Hoot" misses an opportunity to dispense a bit more knowledge about the sort of owls an eighth-grade boy is trying to save in this adaptation of Carl Hiaasen's novel.

"Hoot" is a comedy with underpinnings of environmental awareness, but it spends a lot of time on filler, from a dopey cop (Luke Wilson) and a school bully to chases, hijinks and a small menagerie of critters such as alligators, snarling dogs and snakes.

The movie, directed and adapted by Wil Shriner, is set in Coconut Cove, Fla., where the rootless Roy (Logan Lerman from the WB's "Jack & Bobby") is enrolled in his sixth school in eight years, thanks to his father's job. Roy shows up in his Montana duds, is nicknamed "Cowgirl" and bullied on the school bus by an oversize tough kid named Dana (Eric Phillips).

But Roy finds some unlikely friends and co-conspirators in a barefoot runaway called Mullet Fingers (Cody Linley) and his stepsister, a soccer standout named Beatrice (Brie Larson). The three embark on a mission to stop a restaurant chain from putting a pancake house on the land where endangered owls live.

The construction foreman (Tim Blake Nelson) and an officious executive (Clark Gregg), however, will do anything to open their 100th location.

Logan Lerman is Roy in "Hoot," based on Carl Hiaasen's novel. Click photo for larger image.

That sets up a battle of wills and wits between the middle-schoolers and Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House.

"Hoot" features five songs by Jimmy Buffett, who appears on screen as a laid-back teacher, and deals with a number of worthy issues, from paving paradise and bullying to the strain of stepfamilies and always being the new kid in class.

It probably helps to be a grade-school student watching "Hoot." If you're an adult, you notice that the teens jump into a small boat and don't wear life vests, and no one seems to care that Mullet Fingers is living in an abandoned boat.

And if the teens would just tell responsible adults -- parents, a teacher -- about their concerns, the struggle might be cut short, but so would the movie.

The youthful cast does a nice, natural job in a project designed to showcase rapidly disappearing "old Florida."

But the movie isn't that funny or rousing, and it has a certain made-for-TV or old-fashioned feel, making it hard to howl too enthusiastically for "Hoot."