The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special

I was not expecting this special. I was impressed, had a Dr. Seuss vibe to it with some fun humor. Not too childish and not too adult. Somewhere happily in the middle. I want to see more of this David Pumpkins guy. Hopefully next year he will return.

Who is Halloween Santa? It has to be David S. Pumpkins (Tom Hanks). The narrator (Peter Dinklage) recounts his meeting with Pumpkins as teenager Kevin. His little sister Dotty picks the dumpy pumpkin which comes with David S. Pumpkins who tells them that he's theirs for Halloween. The Ditmeyer brothers are bullies. Kevin likes Paige. The neighborhood boogeyman Raincoat Man has taken everybody's candy.

It's a silly SNL skit that Tom Hanks does with Bobby Moynihan and Mikey Day. It's fun for a stupid two minute break but it struggles to be more than that. It has rudimentary animations with the trio doing the wrap around. It's not quite kiddie level but also not subversive enough to be adult. It's a light mixture of both. While it's watchable, it's not rewatchable.

This just aired in what usually is the last half-hour of the 90-minute-show, "Saturday Night Live" but since that night was a Halloween-sketches compilation show with one of those sketches featuring the title character of this animated special played by Tom Hanks in that sketch and voiced by him here as well, "SNL" ran for an hour and five minutes instead. The cartoon was amusing if not hilarious and so was pretty entertaining for what it was. It certainly was a decent time-waster, that's for sure!

I can't understand how the major outlet reviews for this special were negative; this one is hilarious. I love David S. Pumpkins' dry humor, and his one-liners made me laugh out loud. One criticism was the "crude" animation. Yes, it has an old-school look, but personally I loved it because it reminded me of the Halloween specials I adored when I was younger (e.g., The Peanuts and Garfield).

I think there are two reasons why the reviews were negative. First, it originally aired during an SNL timeslot, and people were probably expecting a more adult-oriented special. (This is understandable but doesn't make it any less funny.) Second, I believe good dry humor is something that has become somewhat of a lost art. I think people want their humor to be more "in-your-face" which is an unfortunate result of today's society.

Not only did I love this special as an adult, when I told my seven-year-old son that he should watch it, he ended up watching it four times in two days. So the joy of David S. Pumpkins spans generations, man!

It is meant for families, kids, adults? It's very confusing as to who this is for. Based on the people involved it should have been funny or good but it is neither. Tom Hanks, whom I thinks is awesome, could place this on his resume right between Turner and Hootch and The Man with One Red Shoe if he were listing his works by quality.