A blurb from the Variety review to get you going on Banooshing ideas:The story of a "forbidden" romance between a sorority sister and a handicapped young man, "Pumpkin" begins as though the filmmakers imagine that they're making a daringly anti-p.c. serio-comedy, but long before it's over, the picture is wearing its bleeding liberal heart all over its sleeve. Conceptually a sort of "Harold and Maude" with a mentally and physically challenged kid rather than an old lady repping the taboo object of desire, this American Zoetrope production gets along on curiosity value for a while, but becomes increasingly unconvincing and ludicrous as it staggers endlessly toward the finish line. Impressionable girls and connoisseurs of bizarre-lite represent parallel target audiences for this United Artists offering, which should find more viewers down the line on video than in theaters.
3 comments:
i really didn't like this movie for some reason. maybe it's the fact that i watched the second half of it after watching memento and it just didn't live up to that standard. but i think the movie was introduced in a way that made it seem like it's a fake transparent effort in trying to convey that we can somehow beat the force on nature and change the world. the most interesting character i thought was the poetry teacher. i like his subtle role in the plot over all.
This movie was absurd, and that was clearly the point. I was a little unsure why we were watching it at the beginning - it seemed like another teen movie. It ended up being a parody of itself - the things that happened in the movie seem ridiculous; the movie gets you to consider why its plot is so bizarre. I thought the actor that played Pumpkin was unconvincing at the beginning, but that helped further the feeling that things were not quite the way they were initally presented. It brought you around to both sides of an issue: how gross and fake the lives of these sorority girls were, but then also how gross it would be for Carolyn and Pumpkin's relationship to actually happen.
There were numerous points during this movie when I burst out laughing at the absolute absurdity, especially when they leave Pumpkin at the beach. I don't agree with the summarizer that the movie devolves into ridiculosity. Carolyn is faced with decisions that have only one solution, at least in her reality. However, her character development is a bit off. She doesn't seem to be the bubbly sorority sister that everyone describes her as, even before her experiences with pumpkin.
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