Set in a small suburban town on All Hallows' Eve, the special centers on David Pumpkins and his skeleton sidekicks who show a young boy and his sister the true meaning of Halloween, answering none of their questions along the way.
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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.
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.
What a gross disappointment. All of the saccharine of a Charlie Brown holiday special and none of the charm. Trite script and animation, no laughs.This might have been appropriate in an 8:00pm time slot for 7 year olds...but in Saturday Night Live's Time slot? No. Lorne Michaels should be embarrassed.
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.