Pumpkin: Critic Reviews

Although I often found it hysterically funny, I was never quite sure if I was laughing at it or with it.

Remember: These are two hours of your life you'll never get back.

[T]hose same extremes prevent us from taking its message seriously, and the Stepford Wives mentality doesn't work in a modern context.

Instead of putting an easy-to-swallow candy coating on a touchy subject, Pumpkin searches for beauty in ugliness and quality in imperfection.

Relentlessly, and sometimes brilliantly, it forces us to decide what we really think, how permissive our taste really is, how far a black comedy can go before it goes too far.

For all its many flaws, Pumpkin has some worthwhile ideas and funny moments, and its whacked-out heart is in the right place.

By presenting an impossible romance in an impossible world, Pumpkin dares us to say why either is impossible -- which forces us to confront what's possible and what we might do to make it so.

If you believe any of this, I can make you a real deal on leftover Enron stock that will double in value a week from Friday.

This is the sort of Pumpkin that really deserves to be smashed.

[A] rather thinly-conceived movie.

Rambling and diffuse, this debut film vacillates between the Farrelly brotthers' gross-out comedy and a softer, kinder message film, an incoherent blend that proves frustrating and not particularly enjoyable either.

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Like a grinning Jack O' Lantern, its apparent glee is derived from a lobotomy, having had all its vital essence scooped out and discarded.

Pumpkin is a movie that resists categorization, that manages wit, intelligence, audacity and pointed social commentary while still entertaining us with a terrifically bizarre combination of soapy, ultra-stylized satire and blackly comic fairytale.

Successfully blended satire, high camp and yet another sexual taboo into a really funny movie.

Although there are many juicy supporting performances, Christina Ricci owns this movie. What a wonderful talent, and what a maddening, but enjoyable film.

One of the most uneven motion pictures that I've had the displeasure of sitting through over the past few years.

...a pretentious mess...

Christina Ricci comedy about sympathy, hypocrisy and love is a misfire.

By halfway through this picture I was beginning to hate it, and, of course, feeling guilty for it.... Then, miracle of miracles, the movie does a flip-flop.

Though Harris is affecting at times, he cannot overcome the sense that Pumpkin is a mere plot pawn for two directors with far less endearing disabilities.

Ambitious but moth-eaten satire.

A savage John Waters-like humor that dances on the edge of tastelessness without ever quite falling over.

This low-rent -- and even lower-wit -- rip-off of the Farrelly brothers' oeuvre gets way too mushy -- and in a relatively short amount of time.

All the filmmakers are asking of us, is to believe in something that is improbable.