Product Description

Silly, sweet, farcical and subversive, Pumpkin pushes the boundaries of teen melodrama to anabsurd pitch, resulting in a film that is bracing, hilariously funny, and quite often, and in unexpected ways, touching (A.O. Scott, The New York Times)! Sexy Carolyn McDuffy (Christina Ricci) has a perfect lifea good family, a top sorority and a hot boyfrienduntil she meets the not-so-perfect Pumpkin, (Hank Harris), a challenged discus thrower who touches her soul and turns her life upside down. Suddenly smitten, Carolyn finds herself embroiled in a culture clash that will make you laugh with humor, with recognition and with disbelief (Roger Ebert) as you follow her hysterical journey from popular insider'to ostracized outcast!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30176 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-11-05
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.com
Pumpkin scores bonus points for risk-taking satire, but it’s the right movie made by the wrong people. Despite an able assist from star and coproducer Christina Ricci, first-time codirectors (and USC film-school graduates) Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder lack the delicate touch required to pull off a comedic romance between an idealistic sorority girl (Ricci) and the semi-retarded, physically challenged boy nicknamed Pumpkin (Hank Harris) whom she’s paired with as part of her sorority’s image-boosting charity campaign. The movie boldly addresses the taboos and condescension typically applied toward the disabled in movies and hits its satirical targets (social elitism, campus hypocrisy) while undermining the "Jerry’s Kids" stereotype of so-called "special" people. It’s a valiant effort, but the strengths of Pumpkin are overwhelmed by its ineptitude, with poor character development, choppy plotting, and rampant inconsistencies. Its many flaws aside, Pumpkin deserves credit for trying something new, difficult, and altogether challenging. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

...Who can you laugh at?
First off, a minor correction for the offical review of this film. These two may be first time co-directors, but this wasn't their first film. They're the writing team behind "Dead Man on Campus".

And no, a lot of people aren't going to like this movie. If you liked "But I'm a Cheerleader", you'll probably love it. I did. The characters are drawn in much the same way: earnest, but completely lunatic.

The subject matter is also, like 're-orienting' queerfolk, generally considered not appropriate comedy material, and as such, there are some folks who will hate this movie no matter how the subject is approached, because there "just isn't anything funny about the mentally disabled". I thought it did a good job of staying between the sort of flat-out mean fun that "Something About Mary" made of disabled kids, and the smarmy "our poor wounded angels" attitude so many people adopt when portraying the mentally disabled. This movie treats their subjects like normal people - some of them are mean, some of them are nice, some of them are better than others.

Taken too seriously
If some of you haven't noticed, this movie isn't meant to be hardcore reality. Its supposed to be a story, and thats what the directors wanted. Not a detailed look into the life of a surroity, not a perfect student, just a normal girl who falls in love but doesnt want to really. I thought this was a really good movie. It's supposed to show almost a sense of surreality. I never would have thought everyone whould have such negatory reviews toward it. Perhaps all these people are just like the people in the movie. Afraid of something diffrent.

Pumpkin - Good concept, bad script
I agree with Jeff Shannon.

Pumpkin could have scored higher for me because the concept has never been done before. It's unfortunate that the script was not well written. No matter how great the actor, a bad script is hard to execute. Christina Ricci is an able actor, but she has great difficulty pulling off sincerity. Her transformation from spoiled sorority girl to sensitive human isn't believable. The script skims the surface of each character, without really developing who they are and why they act as they do. It goes from one unbelievable scene to the next, and although I stuck with it to the end...hoping that something would change...my initial instinct in the first 10 minutes to "stop watching" should have been followed. It's a real disappointment to me when such a challenging film topic isn't done well. I'm also surprised that Francis Ford Coppola (who funded the movie) didn't help the two young filmmakers out a little more. With some guidance from him, this would have been a great film.

By all means borrow the movie (or rent it), but if something tells you to stop it early on, don't perservere. Turn off the DVD and doing something else. Unless you are a screenwriter...then by all means watch it, and then go develop a script that does justice to this challenging topic.