Change Your Image
cannotlogon58
Reviews
Fall (1997)
The epitome of unintended humour.
This paean to love-gone-awry is, without a doubt, the single talkiest, preachy, unintendedly hilarious movie reduced to cellulose. Presented under the guise of high-minded opinions of love, society, sacrifice, and truth, it is a self-indulgent muddle of kinky sex and dumb logic. The final scene alone bears watching, only to count how many times the "hero's" speech SHOULD have ended. There are at least three or four full-term pregnant pauses in which one expects to see the credits crawl, only to have him launch into another screed about his passion and his loss. Ugh. (Honorable mention for most endings in on ending is Lord of the Rings: Reurn of the King, which "ends" four or five time, but at least it was a great film.)
Pumpkin (2002)
Apparently, this film speaks differently to each who see it.
It is a testament of sorts to the ambivalence of "Pumpkin" that so many people who obviously love movies (imdb members who take the time and effort to comment here) could watch this movie, and come away with such a vast disparity of opinions, not of the film's overall quality, but as to exactly what kind of movie the director, screenwriter and producers were trying to tell in the first place. It seems several commentators here actually took the movie at face value, and thought it a straight-faced "romance" between a privileged sorority member (Ms. Ricci who, arguably, plays it so brilliantly straight-faced, the audience can't help but be left off balance) and a mentally- and physically-handicapped boy whose quiet suffering inspires our heretofore self-indulgent protagonist to take stock in herself, and look beyond the shallow limits of her egocentric worldview. For the first 10 or 15 minutes of this movie, it is understandable to think that it is nothing more than a big-screen production of an afterschool special. Not long thereafter, though, "Pumpkin"'s tone is uncut camp. "Pumpkin" is NOT black comedy, a genre marked by subtle undercurrents of the macabre that allow its audiences the occasional uncomfortable laughs, but in which larger and decidedly UN-funny themes are at the heart of the movie. (See Todd Stolenz's "Happiness") "Pumpkin" does not address weighty issues, it lampoons those who do. Ricci's Carolyn comes about as close to self-understanding as Halley's Comet does to this planet once every 76 years (a scant 39 million miles on April 11, 1986). This "Pumpkin" pie is pure farce filling in a camp-comedy crust, baked 90 minutes in an oven set on "Mockery"...then, served cold. Very cold.