Pumpkin

Pumpkin is the first movie where someone needs that one person to change them for the better. Mentorship is the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor, but it is not for the mentee but also for the mentor.

During Carolina’s first encounter with Pumpkin while she was trying to help him play frisbee, she was blinded by her awkwardness of her assigned challenge athlete. She knew that Pumpkin was trying to communicate with her but could not figure out what it was.

As the audience member, I knew that he was attempting to say her name because he was so mesmerized at his first time seeing a girl.

This film exposes how fake sorority girls are. They are no different from the girls in high school. This is one of the reasons why I never aspired to be a part of one. Sororities are like cliques and I was never a fan of trying to fit in. The sorority girls were a classic case of the nice guy syndrome.

There is a difference between being nice and being good. According to John Gorman on Medium, “nice is holding a door open and hoping for a “Thank you.” Good is holding a door open just because it is closed.”

The sorority girls only agreed to become mentors for the challenge athletes because they wanted to look good, and they wanted to win something in return. Their views on the mentally challenged never changed.

Carolina and Jeanine made me realize how ungrateful some people are. Not everyone has the same opportunities in life, but I forgot that they were not being good, they were being nice. The more that Pumpkin spent with Carolina, the stronger he became. She gave him the confidence to learn that he could be like any normal guy. It was meant for them to be in each other’s life so they could finally be together.

Why was Carolina’s boyfriend given the name of a male doll? They could have named him: Bob, Greg, Roger, or Christian. He reminds of John Travolta in Grease with the butt chin and the slicked hair. The scene that bothered me the most in the film was the car accident. It was overly dramatic.

No man is going to be crying and whining because they got body slammed on the ground by a disabled boy.

They would be embarrassed but I do not think that it deserved a life-changing moment.

They could have had Ken crash into a tree, hitting his head on the steering wheel, pan away from the sound of the horn and him being unconscious and then fading out... Adam Larson (the screenwriter) knows good and well that at least one of these white characters was supposed to be racist. The setting of this movie is in South Carolina.

I honestly thought it should have been Judy (Carolina’s mother) when she made that comment over the phone with her daughter about how she needed to be careful because of those people who were visiting the university. In my mind, I was like I know that is not what she was saying but then I remembered the challenged athletes.

Even though, I would not expect anything from a redneck state. Joy (Pumpkin’s mother) was the perfect example of mothers who cannot let their children fly. I understand that raising a child who is on the spectrum is difficult.

I always applaud those parents who knew nothing about autism and had to learn how to care for them. People like Pumpkin must grow up and enter the real world just like us. My favorite scene was the awkward silence between Ken and Pumpkin when they found out that Carolina wanted to spend time with them.

I felt bad for Cici in that moment on the beach and at the end of the movie because she did not get her love. That was the perfect opportunity to let it be known that big girls deserve a connection like skinny girls.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Pumpkin and understanding its message about being romantically challenged and the importance of mentorship that involves encouragement and growth.