Very Cool!!!

Absolutely Fantastic

A lot of fun.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Silly, but if you like Halloween or SNL, not a waste of time by any means. It's quirky and inane, like the Addams Family. Not as classy or deep, but witty in a sort of hit and run Oscar Wilde kind of way. Halloween used to be simple and more fun than bloody or violent. It isn't the classic that The Great Pumpkin is, but it is sort of like the next best thing. There is nothing like Rocky Horror, but Hedwig is pretty cool if you want more of that kind of thing. Same with David S. Pumpkins. It is family friendly, for the most part, unless you are a Klansman.

"The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special" is a very recent Halloween special from this year and it aired just 2 days ago in fact the day I am writing this. The director here is Emmy winner Don Roy King and this shows already how closely it is connected to the successful long-running Saturday Night Live. I don't know too much about SNL, so no further elaboration in that area. It got some attention especially because the title character is voiced by Tom Hanks and we also see him in costume of his animated character very early and very late during these slightly over 20 minutes. The other well-known name in the cast here is Peter Dinklage who narrates the whole thing. Oh yes I forgot to say it is an animated movie and it unites aspects of several long-running shows into this thingey here. The title character acts and reacts a bit like Bender from Futurama, the moral at the end reminded me of South Park and a lot of the slapstick comedy had a touch of Simpsons to it. And these are only the ones I know. I am sure you will find more parallels, also in terms of the animation style for example. Anyway, I struggled a bit with the main character early on from a comedy perspective, but in the second half I liked him more. The boy and his little sister in the center of it all were nice from start to finish. I am surprised many of the other reviewers hated it so much because at least as a one-time project I think it worked and was a fun watch. The focus on Halloween and several plot points makes it basically impossible to turn this into a recurring series, but that's perfectly fine. I am not sure if it could work as such. But I would not say no to another 20-minute-sequel for Halloween 2018, 2019 or 2020. This was never a scary watch, so it is also a good watch for the little ones. If they are old enough to trick'n treating, they are old enough to watch this television special. I give it a thumbs-up.

Saturday Night Live has been awful for several years now so it's no surprise that this special is not funny. If you are familiar with the Tom Hanks sketch, you know that it was a thin premise that should have been quickly forgotten. Sadly it wasn't and now you will see this every Halloween and ask why.

An animated special based on an SNL sketch that, theoretically, should never have been as funny as it ended up being, seems like a bad idea to produce in the first place. BUT, if they were going to move forward with it, I think that more effort should have been made to appeal to the SNL viewers who liked it in the first place. Aside from the odd line that you would have heard in the original sketch (eg. the skeletons being "part of it"), the first 2 acts gave you little to tell you that this is connected to SNL. Only two of the voice actors were SNL cast members (Bobby Moynihan included, even though he recently left the show) and the story was crafted to be more like one of the traditional Halloween specials for kids. This was a true shame as I was looking forward to seeing how this would be handled. It is clearly a missed opportunity as they were able to take something so simple and build on it for the show.