Rating: Summary: Indie Flick Fanatic MUST HAVE! Review: To appreciate this film, you have to have a very deep appreciation for indie flicks. The ambience and scenery that this film paints is too surreal for the general movie watching public. It's just as quirky as "Ghost World" by Terry Zwigoff. If you liked that, you'll LOVE this!
Rating: Summary: Cuckold fantasy supreme!! Review: There's a very large part of this film that noone here seems to have gotten: the celebration of cuckoldry to the extreme. The jock boyfriend (Clark) is a good guy in large part: loving, attentive, sensitive, faithful and masculine. His rejection by Ricci's goddess character for a challenged young man (Pumpkin)is the basic cuckold premise. Add in his public humiliation (the locker room shower sequence, a hoot), his eventual castration by paralysis (a deeply erotic element for all interested in cuckoldry), and you have the ultimate veiled cuckold fantasy. The scene where Pumpkin (the guy who stole his girl and was the indirect cause of the accident which forever stole Clark's manhood and indeed ability to walk at all, natch) visits the newly injured jock in the hospital is a classic: Pumpkin brings him, of all things, a cactus, darkly laughing at Clark's loss of you-know-what. Clark's acknowledgement of Pumpkin's superiority as a man, and Ricci's somewhat callous public display of agreement, ends the story with a delicious 'bang'. Clark looks suspiciously like the '70's film Superman, is named after the Kent character, and his fate is akin to the actor who portrayed the Man of Steel. Get it? PUMPKIN is a dark, highly erotic film that keenly shows exactly where Christina Ricci's tastes lie. And she does not disappoint, neither does this unheralded classic film.
Rating: Summary: black comedy? Review: i dont see pumpkin as a black comedy. actually i saw it as more of a romantic film about a sorority girl that has to learn how to not run with the pack and follow her heart. carolyn has a virtually perfect life. she has the star athlete boyfriend, shes smart, shes popular and is on top if it all in a high society sorority. when her sorority tries to beat another sorority to the top they decide to work with a special olympics team of a sort and there she meets pumpkin. pumpkin (okay they say hes retarded but i just dont see it, other than slow motor skills and being a bit slow i just dont see it) is mentally retarded and the son of a very over protective mother that has grown very accustomed to the fact that this illness will keep her son her baby forever. as pumpkin grows his mother continues to try to keep him as a child. when carolyn and pumpkin fall in love she is ostricised by everyone she knows. she must find a way to grow the strength to follow her heart no matter what.pumpkin is one of those movies that everyone should see. i didnt think i was gonna like this movie. i had heard so much about "oh you should see pumpkin" but noone had seen it, they had just heard it was good but today it came on sundance and yes, it will definatly be a dvd im gonna buy...
Rating: Summary: revolving genres Review: Christina Ricci, whose performances I normally enjoy, couldn't save this movie from its' shattered existence. The movie centers around Ricci's perfect, shallow, sorority sister character, who falls in love with a mentally challenged young man. Filled to the brim with jokes about "retards and minorities," the movie tries, but falters. A satire? Sometimes, but most of the time I felt this movie struggling under the weight of what it was trying to do. In fact, I'm not quite sure the directors knew what they were doing. I found myself questioning the intent throughout. Approach with trepidation. If you're interested in seeing these risque ideas played out in a more effective manner, rent Storytelling instead.
Rating: Summary: PUMPKINHEAD~~~** Review: Frankly, I think a lot of people in this forum that have reviewed this movie have missed a few details regarding it. Midway through PUMPKIN I started to become suspicious of the ever-present after school message of "retards, minorities - we're all the same and YOU WILL accept it!!!!" message. Fortunately, this was not the case. SEE cars drive off of cliffs and explode mid-air! MARVEL as the driver not only survives, but sustains relatively minor injuries - with no burns!! BEWARE of Christina Ricci's absent bra & bizarrely unnatural blonde hair!!! NOTE that the back of the DVD does not mention "challenged" sex!!!! Otherwise, this movie was splendid and the dialogue just adds to it. Recommended.
Rating: Summary: Ricci takes another risk.... Review: Christina Ricci is a brilliant actress and a young woman willing to tackle risky roles that leading commercial actresses would turn down in a heart beat. She has made big budget films (Addams Family, Sleepy Hollow) and smaller independent films (The Opposite of Sex). In all her roles, she is always intriguing and fun to watch. "Pumpkin" is a strange film that deals with a taboo subject---the relationship between a special needs person and a so-called "normal" person. While I applaude the directors and star of the film for looking at this delicate issue, it was like watching a bizarre combination of "Legally Blonde" and the Mel Gibson film "Tim". I wouldn't call it a great film but it is definitely a movie that will get a good deal of conversation at the water cooler or with friends. Check it out, especially if you enjoy the fine acting of Ms. Ricci. She never disappoints.
Rating: Summary: Black Comedy Better Left Gray Review: At times, PUMPKIN features a wonderfully, whimsical, fanciful sense of humor. The film pokes fun at possibly every popular convention associated to sorority life and classism ... even classism within classism, if that makes any sense. Arguably, it might be the best satire of the college campus Greek system ever made, not a pure comedy like ANIMAL HOUSE but true satire much in the vein of Woody Allen's earlier works ... but, sadly, that's not what the story is about. Occasionally bold in its risks and probably prone to offend quite a few viewers, PUMPKIN is horribly uneven in its story, pacing, and, unfortunately, acting. Christina Ricci as "the sexy Carolyn McDuffy" (product packaging's words, not mine) does her best to elevate a rather standard fare about the perfect wealthy sorority girl inadvertantly finding her soulmate with the physically challenged 'Pumpkin' (of the film's title), but hackneyed seriousness thrown smack dab in the middle of obvious farce weighs this film down consistently in keeping it from becoming a "message film" ... that is, unless you want to agree that "sorority girls" are bad influences on society. Even the most purile viewer won't accept so elementary a message in so obtuse a package. The story veers all over the map. Ricci falls in and out of love with Pumpkin, her hunk fraternity tennis pro, her sorority life, her social life, etc. At times, she oozes elegance while balancing bubbleheadedness. Finally, she teeters on the brink of self-discovery, leading herself to a scene where she apparently attempts suicide ... but only ends up looking tired and unkempt. The interesting subplots (an absolutely hysterical foul-mouthed poetry teacher and her mismatched friendship with the overly plump) are left on the roadsides. Did the writer and/or director have any intention by introducing them into the script, or were they forever destined to be dangling, unanswered questions? The viewer will never know, as the film certainly won't warrant a "Director's Cut." Had more time been spent on the cohesiveness of the story and less on the stand-alone segments that actually work, PUMPKIN might've had the chance to be much more than what it ends up ... and perhaps that's a larger metaphor that first-time writer/directors Broder and Abrams were postulating. Several more hours drafts out of the PC might've spruced this film so that it would've minimally surfaced as an underground favorite -- a cult film, of an odd sort -- because their hearts were in the right place. A farcical feel-good movie would find a spot on any cinema buff's shelf. However, this PUMPKIN is better left in the patch.
Rating: Summary: a new look at a not so new issue Review: society today frowns on things not so common, such as biracial relations, gay relations, and now mentally challanged relations. pumpkin is a darkly funny look at what happens when a conventional girl meets a challanged man by the name of pumpkin. it explores how carolyne (chrisina ricci) feels about her feelings towards pumpkin, and how pumpkin grows as a person. it shows how society reactes to these not so normal situations and how cruel people can be, until they want something. pumpking is a movie i definitly recommend because it is something new, and makes you appreciate all types of people.
Rating: Summary: Pumpkin, Schpumpkin! Review: What on Earth were these folks thinking when they produced this film? This movie is absolutely brilliant at times in it's satirizations of sorority life, self centered jockism, and the overprotective and under informed upper society class. Unfortunately, these relatively short lived insights are completely overwhelmed by poor plot development, shallow characterization, and a general aimlessness in the movie's construction. Although grounded in an interesting and thought provoking idea, the story just doesn't really do anything except for play around with people's common conceptions and stereotypes. The potential was there...but directors Broder and Adams appear to have never actually thought it through. To be fair, Christina Ricci's acting chops are excellent in her portrayal of Carolyn McDuffy, an incredibly naive debutante experiencing her first realizations that the world just isn't fair (just remember that this is satire, and not a serious story). The character of Pumpkin, while convincingly played by Hank Harris, is poorly written, with the level of his "disability" jumping haphazardly, at times being only mildly speech impaired, and at others being fully semi-comatose. The rest of the characters are easily forgettable, with the sole exception of Lisa Banes as Carolyn's mother "Chippy", who seems to actually revel in her complete obliviousness of any form of reality. The DVD itself was average in its presentation and quality, but to be honest, after having watched the feature, I didn't even bother to fire up any of the "special features"...
Rating: Summary: beautiful strange movie Review: i gave this movie 5 stars because of the meaning behind it and because i could relate and understand the characters feelings. This story is about a sorority girl who has what some people would percieve as the perfect life until she meets a mentally retarded boy named pumpkin who is creative open and sweet- nothing like her boyfriend. She ends up falling in love with pumpkin and then her life starts to fall apart and everyone is against thier relationship because of the sterotypes that go along with a girl like her being with a retarded boy. She can see how special pumpkin is and how creative and open he is and how much he really loves her back -even though hes retarded he knows how to show his feelings for her in many creative and thoughful ways. Her life starts to fall apart and she becomes the outkast because she follows her heart and decides to go with pumpkin. The problem i have with this movie is the way it made fun of itself - i didnt know what to think at times, i liked the story but some parts were strange like the fight scene but like i said the movie was making fun of itself- i got the point. I would rate this movie somewhere to between 4 and 5 stars. It's unique and the story was meaningful.
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