Why did they go all-in on David Pumpkins?
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
It's not surprising that NBC found a way to capitalize on the unexpected popularity of Tom Hanks' breakout Saturday Night Live character, David S. Pumpkins. The network has a long, not necessarily proud history of taking amusing SNL sketches and stretching them them out into full-fledged movies. We should probably count ourselves lucky "Haunted Elevator" only spawned a half-hour animated special and not a feature-length project. Even so, it's difficult to understand why anyone at the network thought The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special was something worth greenlighting.
Where the original sketch presented Pumpkins and his skeleton entourage as overzealous performers in a really lousy Tower of Terror-ripoff, this special re-imagines the trio as enchanted do-gooders tasked with saving Halloween through the power of... whatever it is they do. The goal seemed to be to combine the timeless charm of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials with a dash of The Cat in the Hat and a spooky, self-aware flourish. On paper, that actually sounds like a pretty swell combination. But in order to pull it off, you really need a character with a bit more meat on the bones.
This special accomplishes little more than reminding us how much of a one-note character David Pumpkins really is. He's amusing because he's so bizarre and random. Why the wacky costume? What's the point of the dancing skeletons? Is David Pumpkins a reference to something? Nope, it's its own thing. The original sketch made great use of its own nonsensical premise. But where can you really take that premise from there?
Nowhere, judging from the fact that this episode settles mostly for rehashing the beats of "Haunted Elevator" again and again. In some cases, the dialogue is even ripped verbatim from that sketch. Like so many SNL offshoots, what works in doses of a few minutes doesn't hold up over the long haul. Judging from "An Oral History of David Pumpkins," that's a lesson writers Bobby Moynihan, Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell were reminded of when they were putting together the original sketch and realizing that less is more where the main character is concerned. Yet for some reason, it didn't stick as they took on the challenge of crafting this special.
This special does include a handful of fun little wrinkles to the established formula - the Strawberry car, the song that never quite begins - but none of that does enough to justify reviving the character in the first place. Even having Hanks reprising the role (both in animated form and in the live-action bookend segments). Plus, the absence of Kenan Thompson's melodramatic elevator operator from "Haunted Elevator" illustrates how vital he was in terms of selling the whole joke the first time around.
Ignoring Mr. Pumpkins himself, the biggest mistake Moynihan, Day and Seidell made with this special is trying to have their cake and eat it too in terms of tone. It clearly wants to appeal to an all-ages audience while maintaining a self-aware, subversive tone, but it doesn't go far enough in either direction. The all-ages format limits the humor and the possibilities where Peter Dinklage's irascible, rhyming narrator is concerned. The characters are all aware of the strangeness of Mr. Pumpkins and his entourage, but the script never does anything particularly witty with that fact. The special is little more than a blend of holiday tropes, boring, flavorless animation and a barebones tale about a tween hero learning the meaning of the holiday and how to be comfortable in his own skin.
It's a shame that Moynihan, Day and Seidell didn't lean harder into that last element. If "Haunted Elevator" is *about* anything other than the walking, dancing non-sequitur that is David Pumpkins, it's about performers being incredibly confident in themselves and their work, regardless of its actual value to society. There's something weirdly inspirational about their total commitment to the David Pumpkins routine (73 out of 100 floors, after all). Maybe that could have formed the basis of a clever spinoff, but it's not enough of a focal point here.
The Verdict
The David S. Pumpkins is the latest in a long line of SNL spinoffs that take a funny gag and wear it into the ground. Even with Tom Hanks back in the title role, this episode does little to add anything new to the formula or reinvent the holiday special. The animation is bland, the jokes mostly recycled and the humor unable to strike a balance between appealing to an all-ages audience and adult fans of the character.
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