| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Is alive, and takes chances, and uses the wicked blade of satire in order to show up the complacent political correctness of other movies in its campus genre.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
I laughed harder at Pumpkin than at any other film I've seen this year -- but be warned: This dark campus comedy is not for all tastes, or probably even most tastes.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
Pumpkin's two greatest strengths: the majority of the film is original and engaging, and Christina Ricci turns in another fine performance. This pair of assets alone is worth the price of admission.
|
| 70 |
New Times (L.A.)
For all its brilliantly brazen sequences and energetic supporting players (as the young lovers' mothers, Brenda Blethyn and Lisa Banes are terrific), Pumpkin's abrupt shifts of mood and needlessly complicated ending(s) render its latter third a bit of a chore.
|
| 70 |
Washington Post
An odd and oddly endearing romantic black comedy.
|
| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Fitfully daring, Pumpkin isn't quite sure what it's about -- the tone bounces between thudding satire and toothless camp parody -- but it's definitely a bad-mannered child of our times.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
Chris Jones
Wildly uneven but nonetheless intriguing and funny.
|
| 60 |
Film Threat
Don R. Lewis
It rebounds in the last moments and I thought successfully blended satire, high camp and yet another sexual taboo into a really funny movie.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Broder's script makes the weird transition from satire to camp as if there were no distinction between the two. It's a bracing if at times bewildering experience.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
The filmmakers try to balance pointed, often incisive satire and unabashed sweetness, with results that are sometimes bracing, sometimes baffling and quite often, and in unexpected ways, touching.
|
| 58 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Bill White
Combining the fairy-tale idealism of "Edward Scissorhands" with "Hairspray's" devilish sarcasm, the directors try for the sincerity of a message movie while affecting the hip facade of satirists.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
As PC busting goes, this first feature directed by Tony R. Abrams and scribe Adam Larson Broder shoots at close range, and there's something endearing about the way the filmmakers fire away so eagerly at such fluorescent-colored targets.
|
| 50 |
Rolling Stone
After a lively start -- the sorority sisters, shaken by the slightest imperfection in themselves, cannot cope with handicapped athletes -- the film smooths its rough edges and reduces complex characters to sitcom stooges. Call it an opportunity missed.
|
| 50 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The film doesn't seem to know how it feels, much less how others are supposed to feel about it.
|
| 50 |
Portland Oregonian
Jas some nice moments, a great soundtrack and some wonderful works by the dark-even-while-light Ricci.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
Off sorority row, the movie goes flat for increasingly long stretches, with the filmmakers displaying so little understanding of or genuine feeling for the mentally challenged that they never advance past stutter-and-stumble humor.
|
| 40 |
Los Angeles Times
The result is hit or miss, with a laugh here and there, ultimately creating an aura of hopeless and drawn-out improbability.
|
| 40 |
Austin Chronicle
There's the shell of not one but two excellent films in Pumpkin, but as it is the one we have here is just too bewildering to puzzle out.
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
The satire is broad and easy, while the romance is thoroughly unconvincing.
|
| 30 |
Variety
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.
|
| 30 |
Village Voice
In its own dimly reckless way, the film is riveting -- not unlike watching a tightrope walker with a bad case of vertigo.
|
| 25 |
New York Daily News
Witless, insulting satire of sorority girls that shamelessly ridicules the mentally challenged. The filmmakers aren't exactly Mensa candidates themselves.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
A brain and a heart, two things that, along with a good story, believable characters and anything resembling style or flair, Pumpkin is fatally missing.
|
| 0 |
San Francisco Chronicle
An amazing film amazingly tasteless, tin-eared and awkward, but amazing all the same. Anyone with a predilection for bad movies might want to see it, if only in an inspecting-the-wreckage spirit, since because movies this misguided come but once or twice a year.
|
