The (Not-So-Great) Pumpkin

After four years of tranfsferring Pumpkin (2002) from one "Movies to Watch" list to another (I tend to carry such lists in a notebook, which gets quite tattered over the course of time), I was a bit disappointed to find it full of stock characters and humor that, while dark, preyed a little too much on annoying stereotypes.

Sure, I can handle the occasional I.Q. joke. But when you take a group of mentally handicapped young men and turn them into caricatures of indiscernable ailments, my stomach turns a bit. One of the biggest "gags" in this movie, for example, consists of a photograph of the title character looking - for lack of a better word - "goofy" (hair tussled, crooked grin, exaggerated features, etc.). Every time that 8 x 11 close-up is on the screen, you want to laugh. And I hate that.

Ditto with Reese Witherspoon's character, Carolyn McDuffy. She was such a cardboard cutout of everything that's wrong with sorority girls that I almost felt sorry for decent sorority chicks out there fighting against the perky, unintellectual materialist stereotype represented by Carolyn.

But, wouldn't you know it... Carolyn has to work with Pumpkin for a sorority house "charity" project, and she falls madly in love with this "creature" she can't understand.

At which point Carolyn rebels against her sisters as she starts sees them for who they "really" are. She then - GASP! - expands her horizons all the while making otherwise poor decisions.

I actually like the idea of this movie; add to that Pumpkin qualifies as a dark comedy, and it's not hard to understand why I've maintained such an interest in seeing it. But the actual experience of watching it did not meet with my expectations. That is to say: it's not so much a "smart" comedy, as it is an annoyinhg parody of itself. An exception to this is at the very end, where Pumpkin almost redeems itself with a simple glance over a shoulder. If you've seen the film, you know what I mean.

So is this a case of a horrific film, or an OK film at odds with high hopes? It's somewhere in-between, though if you - like me - are the sort of geek who keeps "Movies to Watch" lists... don't fret if you forget to add Pumpkin to the updated version.