Pumpkin chuckin  By    |   Monday, September 1, 2003 Filed
under: Uncategorized Tags: ,  All instruments need calibration,
setting standards against benchmarks. So the same with movies,
you need a really crap movie to recognize that yes, your
bullshit detectors are still working and valid. “Pumpkin” is
such a movie, it’s so bad, so you can still tell what is good.
Pumpkin” isn’t about the retarded, it is retarded. The movie has
promise, an interesting proposition, some good cast members, but
lurches around spastically from scene to scene. It’s as if the
first-time directors drew a Venn diagramm using ” What’s Eating
Gilbert Grape “, a randomly chosen Farrelly Brothers movie, and
a John Waters movie (“Hairspray” somewhat) using the area where
all three failed, and stayed firmly within that boundary.  This
is a good movie if you are having doubts about the freshness of
the batteries in your critical faculties. Yes, it is bad. Not
horrid, just poorly scripted, barely adequate production values
and so-so acting.