Pumpkin (***)
review by Jon Waterman

Carolyn McDuffy wants to make this year the best year ever.  She wants to win sorority of the year honors.  She wants her all-star athlete boyfriend to win every match.  What she doesn’t want is for anything to disrupt her perfect life.  Enter:  Pumpkin.
 
In order to help the sorority accomplish their goal, they pick the Challenged games as their charity.  Each girl is assigned an athlete to help train.  Thoroughly disgusted at first, the girls grimace and wince at the thought of anyone different touching them or even looking at them.  Equally disturbed is Carolyn.  Her appointee, Pumpkin, can barely talk or stand up, so how can she not be?  However, over time, she begins to learn that maybe every human is actually human, and that is when things start to crumble around her.
 
If I hadn’t seen Christina Ricci (Carolyn) in anything else, I would say this performance edges on terrible.  However, since I know something about her work, I can amend that early thought to say she does exactly what the script calls for.  The entire cast works incredibly well together.  Everyone takes their character so seriously, that it crosses the line into ridiculous – which is a good thing.
 
In fact, everything about this film is farcical.  The story of the perfect girl being tortured by all these crazy thoughts about “love” and “friendship” is set against the happy, bouncy pastel world of California.  The smart script (by Adam Larson Broder) takes shots at every group depicted.  Most of the zingers are directed at sorority girls, since they are the main focus. However, all are proportionately represented, because all groups have quirks that can be exploited and mocked.  Sometimes the jokes stray and take a more absurd approach and, as such, loses appeal.  In the end, it can be said that “Pumpkin” is one of the few social satires that can also be called funny in a laugh-out-loud way.
 
Possibly the best aspect of the film is the score by John Ottman (“Usual Suspects”).  It ranges from jokingly over-dramatic to appropriately over-dramatic.  That doesn’t sound like much, but it makes all the difference in the world.
 
The film takes a playful look at Greek life and silver spoon life.  It toys with our common perceptions and tries to get us to realize our own close-mindedness.  The unbelievable story line is made plausible.  The reoccurring theme is change.  It may not always be easy, but it’s impossible to fight it.  It’s also impossible to fight this film’s charm.

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