Pumpkin (2002)

 Pumpkin Romanoff (Hank Harris) is a mostly wheelchair bound, mentally challenged teenaged boy. He is to be paired with a sorority volunteer from the local college to coach him for a regional equivalent of the Special Olympics. When Pumpkin first sees his mentor Carolyn McDuffy (a blonde, 21 year old Christina Ricci) he is gobsmacked by love for the first time.

Pumpkin stretches himself as he has never stretched himself before, all to please Carolyn. He wills improvement of his hand eye coordination, starts to stand and even walk more, starts to talk more, its miracle level improvement. Carolyn is deeply moved and effected by the time she spends with Pumpkin, so much so that this beautiful girl who has lived a mostly surifacey life enters a state of existential crises and finds herself, much against her will, falling in love with a mentally retarded man.

I've been using the word audacity a lot lately, but really who decides to make a movie like this? A strange mixture of turn of the Milleniaum raunch comedy and Hallmarkian message film, becomes black comedy gold. The movie delights in messing with expectations, a prime example is Samuel Ball as Kent Woodlands, Carolyn's fraternity royalty, tennis star boyfriend. On the surface Kent seems to embody every jock stereotype in a college movie, yet he is a reasonable person, cares about other people's feelings and sincerely loves his girlfriend, who he might even be (at least at first) a better person then. This makes it all the more tragicly humorous when Carolyn leaves Kent for Pumpkin. 

Starting fairly grounded the film reachs heights of absurdist bliss, it has seemingly all the ingredients of a cult classic yet sadly never achieved that status. Cast includes pre star Amy Adams and Melissa McCarthy in bit roles, as well as Nina Foch in one of her later screen appearances, I was shocked when I saw the name of this 1950's Oscar nominee in the opening credits. I found 'Pumpkin' to be enderingly odd, a bitting but strangly sweet piece of self mockering satire. It's a shame that this film has been forgotten, but its also something of a joy to stumble across it.***