Junk o’Lantern

Wheelchair athlete Pumpkin Romanoff (Hank Harris) lethargically dropped his discus at his feet rather than tossed it each year at the Challenged Games. This year is different. Alpha Omega Pi, in its bloodlust to win Best Sorority honors, selected the event as its off-campus charity and co-ed queen Caroline Duffy (Christina Ricci) as Pumpkin’s mentor. Caroline screams in horror when Pumpkin first mumbles her name, but later inspires her enamored charge to overcome his disabilities. She also bonds with him, shocking their parents, her tennis-hunk boyfriend Kent (Sam Ball), and the entire Southern California State University. So it goes in the ambitious but moth-eaten satire that bears the teen discus thrower’s name. Pumpkin is a taboo chaser that has two directors (Adam Larson Broder and Anthony Abrams, co-writers of Dead Man on Campus) and too few enthralling or hilarious moments. It has one foot stuck in the alternating sweetness and exploitation of a Farrelly Brothers handicap farce and one leg knee-deep in the inflammatory plot (co-ed has sex with a fellow student with cerebral palsy) and themes (malady is the gateway to a deep soul) of Todd Solondz’s Storytelling. Neither appendage breaks new ground nor kicks much life into its obvious, clumsily telegraphed messages about hypocrisy, conformity, the nobility of misery, the shallowness of the privileged, self-serving benevolence and the gray area between pity and compassion.

The story begins in fairytale fashion “not long ago.” Pumpkin is introduced in a close-up as soothing classical music contrasts with his unhappy face. His mom tells him that he looks soooo handsome. “And don’t forget to smile,” she says as he leaves for Games training. But Pumpkin has little to smile about. His only peer contact is a large, mentally challenged kid ripped from the irreverent slapstick of There’s Something About Mary, and Pumpkin’s mother (Lovely and Amazing’s Brenda Blethyn) neither fully understands her son’s mental and physical state nor encourages his independence.

Meanwhile, in a social galaxy far, far away, the Alpha sorority has taken a lead in the best house on campus competition by wooing two Diversity Girls (an African-American and a Filipino with cute Caucasian features) into their fold. Perennial rival Tri-Omega has upped the ante by supporting a Safe Sex in Public Schools program. Against the protests of Caroline and her roommate (“It makes those people feel even worse to come to a campus full of normal people”), the Alpha ladies retaliate by bussing Pumpkin and his teammates onto campus. (“I thought we had it rough,” says one Tri-Omega. “I hear those people are easily aroused.”).

Caroline complains of having to mentor Pumpkin to the lonely, overweight waitress C.C. She then sets up C.C. on a blind date with the lad. The misfired coupling sends C.C. away in tears, Kent to her rescue and Caroline and Pumpkin into each other’s arms.

The most entertaining character spin in the film is that of Kent. I loved his tennis comeback set to retro Peter Gunn-like theme music. His late-night, sob-filled flight by auto pokes fun at Hollywood melodramas and special effects, and his fate is delivered with an infectious call to grins. The film also squeezes a few laughs from the university’s confrontational poet-in-residence (Harry J. Lennix), a channeling of Storytelling’s acidic writing professor via the motor-mouth attorney from Seinfeld.

On the downside, the clique material here is reheated Heathers meets The Stepford Wives. The collage of Pumpkin’s training scenes is pedestrian, and his miraculous transformation from poster boy to prom king undercuts the film’s bite. Caroline’s pseudo-suicidal binge through a medicine cabinet falls flat and the showdown outside the prom is awkwardly staged.

Pumpkin is set in a world of pompously manicured lawns, bushes, thoughts and emotions, where the nicest-looking, squarest people use the foulest language. It’s a film that pokes fun at 1950s’ ideals, condemns the Greek system (“It’s a way for some people to feel better than other people”) and addresses discrimination (“Pumpkin’s not going to sit in the back of the bus anymore”).

Pumpkin himself sums it up the best: “I’m not special. And I’m not retarded.” “He just is what he is and I love him,” adds Kent. I just wish the film moved me that same way.