Anthony Abrams' Pumpkin, a film about a popular sorority girl falling in love with a physically challenged boy, teaches us several important messages, like that girls with big knockers can cure people with physical disabilities just by spending time with them, and that star Christina Ricci needs some serious help deciding which independent film scripts to reject. Pumpkin is the rare film that would be much better with the last 30 minutes hacked off and left for dead on the editing room floor.  It will make viewers wish theatres came equipped with a fast-forward button.

Pumpkin is considered a satire, I guess, except the last time I checked, the word "satire" implied actual funny content.  With most lampoons (like the hysterical Wet Hot American Summer), it's very clear the film is a send-up, but with Pumpkin, we can't separate the parody from the melodrama.  It's clear the filmmakers weren't sure where they wanted their story to go, and even more clear that they lack the skills to get us to this undetermined destination.

Christina Ricci (The Man Who Cried) plays Carolyn McDuffy, the perky, popular leader of the Alpha Omega Pi sorority at Southern California State University via a blue-blood family from Pasadena.  She's got a cute blonde flip; is dating Kent Woodlands (Samuel Ball), the star of the school's tennis team; and with the help of her chirpy, pert sidekicks Jeanine (Dominique Swain, Lolita) and Julie (Marisa Coughlan, Super Troopers), Carolyn thinks the AO Pi sisterhood has a terrific chance of wresting the SOY title (that's Sorority of the Year) from Triple O (that's Omega Omega Omega), the across-the-street house of Barbie clones who win the competition every year.

The SOY judging is based on, among other things, the diversity of each sorority (the jokes start out funny, with a reference to a barbeque where sausages of every size and ethnicity will be served), as well as how active its members are in community service.  Carolyn and crew think they've got things sewn up, as they've almost persuaded a Filipino girl to join their ranks, and they've concocted a foolproof plan to assist a group of physically disabled boys as they train for the local version of the Special Olympics.

And that's just where the trouble starts.  When Carolyn is assigned to aid the wheelchair-bound Pumpkin (Hank Harris, from television's short-lived Popular), she is initially freaked out by his inability to communicate.  But before you know it, Pumpkin is all Carolyn can think about.  I'm not going to get into all of the details of their relationship, mostly because it will take away the film's few surprises, but also because I really don't want to re-live any more of Pumpkin than I absolutely have to.

It's difficult to watch Pumpkin without thinking of Todd Solondz's Storytelling, even though accusing this film of ripping that one off isn't really applicable since they were filmed within months of each other. Storytelling's first narrative is incredibly similar, with the brunette-turned-blonde (Selma Blair) dating a classmate with cerebral palsy while taking a creative writing class taught by a domineering black teacher (Robert Wisdom there; Harry J. Lennix here)...just like Carolyn.  Both films attempt to touch upon as many hot-button issues as it can, though Solondz did it far more successfully.

Personally, I'd rather see a cliché-riddled sequel to Legally Blonde than another film in which the privileged members of college fraternities and sororities are raked over the coals while proudly embracing the same clichés against which it's supposed to be railing.  I'd rather see a sequel to I Am Sam, in which Michelle Pfieffer falls in love with Sean Penn, than another film that's supposed to portray the plight of the handicapped in a serious light but ends up making fun of them.  Then again, one shouldn't expect much from a script brought to you by the think tank behind Dead Man on Campus.

Pumpkin is a wonderful companion piece to Ricci's upcoming Prozac Nation, in which she plays a character I cared about even less than her Carolyn (if that's even possible).  Besides revealing Ricci as one of independent film's most overrated actresses, it also embarrasses one of that industry's finest – Brenda Blethyn, who plays Pumpkin's overprotective mother.

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for language and a scene of sexuality