Hey folks, Harry here.... The best thing about a film festival is that multiple folks can get out there and see a film that maybe just one person has seen and commented on before. John Robie saw PUMPKIN some time ago and just loathed it. He would rant about it being unreleasable and fall down funny stupid. When a friend tells ya stuff like that it begins to leave an impression, of course... I've radically disagreed with Robie upon occassion. Heck, we've even been known to hurl dishes and one another before the conjugal makeup session... But in the end he always knows I'm right and he's wrong. Well, Der Colonel has come out from SUNDANCE to say ROBIE IS WRONG! That PUMPKIN is "enormously inventive, clever and downright hilarious!" Who is right? Well as it is with all opinions, it is two sides of the same coin. I'd love to hear from others that have seen the film. Maybe Robie just had a bad night or was in a funk... We'll have to wait and see for ourselves!
Harry:
Last night, I went to a special screening for volunteers at Sundance -- and saw a movie that I considered to be enormously inventive, clever, and downright hilarious. That movie is "Pumpkin."
Then, today, I hopped onto your website and saw your comments and Robie's review of "Pumpkin," in which you and he constantly slammed it around and babbled about how terrible you think it is!
Are you guys insane? Are you stupid? Did you feel like getting back at the filmmakers because of something they did to you in a past life? Or is satire truly dead (and nobody told me)?
In a nutshell, "Pumpkin" is about a sorority sister (Christina Ricci) whose sorority decides to compete for the "Sorority of the Year" award by signing up for a "killer" charity: they decide to serve as the training squad for a team of Special Olympians. To Ricci's (and everyone's) surprise, she starts to fall in love with Pumpkin, one of the athletes she's training. The relationship becomes a scandal among her sorority sisters, her parents, his mother ("You've raped my son, prostitute!") and her very startled boyfriend. Ultimately, though, Pumpkin turns out to be the "good guy" in the movie, while to shocked and scandalized characters are revealed to be EMOTIONALLY retarded.
OK, so I assume that Robie and others might consider this movie to be "tasteless" or "offensive." That's because, if they weren't too busy jabbering on their cell phones or munching on their popcorn, they might have comprehended the movie's clever, satirical side.
Harry, I'm just shocked by the slams that you're hurling at "Pumpkin," because it's so seldom that such an inventive satire comes into existence. Or maybe there's just no accounting for your taste, or lack thereof.
Back at the Klink,
Der Colonel
