Pleasantville: Review By Dan

Written By: Mr. Supes.

Our Pleasantville citizens: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Paul Walker, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, Jeff Daniels.

Directed by: Gary Ross.

Welcome to Pleasantville! By golly, it sure is swell to have you here. Pleasantville is a wonderful, quaint little town, with the undefeated basketball team, firefighters who will rescue your cat if it gets stuck in a tree (heavens forbid!), and Lover's Lane, where couples go to.... "hold hands". Everything here occurs the same way everyday, and we like it that way because, well, it's pleasant!

And such is the initial attitudes of Pleasantville, a fictional television show that is a rip of other 1950's and 1960's shows that displayed the white picket fence mentality (think 'Leave it to Beaver'). That idyllic utopia where the wife stayed home and cooked and cleaned for the children and her husband in their suburban home, the kids were impossibly well mannered and exceptional in school, and the husband could always rely on his faithful wife to greet him with dinner when he came home from work at the same time everyday with that classic "Honey, I'm home!". This is the world that David (Tobey Maguire, in one of the rare roles that I don't absolutely loathe him) admires and gets lost in as he watches television, ignoring the real world, where he is by all accounts, a nobody.

As David settles in for another lonely night of watching the Pleasantville marathon on T.V., his plan comes into conflict with his sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon, as adorable as ever), who wants to watch a concert on MTV with a date coming over. As they fight over the remote control, they end up breaking it, with a knock at the door almost immediately following this. Jennifer is greeted by the charismatic unnamed TV repairman played by the iconic Don Knotts (R.I.P., sir). After quizzing David on his knowledge of Pleasantville, he decides to give him an odd looking remote control instead of a normal one. As David and Jennifer fight over the new remote control, he presses one of the buttons on it, and they are anomalously transported into Pleasantville's black and white world. From there, the film only becomes more and more brilliant as it goes along.

One of the great things this movie plays on, among other things, is questioning odd things you might have thought about watching older television shows. Did the characters ever use the bathroom? Did they have sex? We're cleverly shown that toilets don't exist in public bathrooms, people in Pleasantville know the difference between their colors and real colors even though these things wouldn't be spoken of in an episode, and it only becomes more ingenious as the story progresses. While it may not be purposefully hilarious, nor do I think it's meant to be (or maybe it is), a lot of the creative inquiries one might have are quite funnily answered, like an inside look into a 50's serial show.

Technically, this movie is a marvel to witness. It gave me a very similar feeling as The Wizard of Oz did, only in reverse. Our main characters go from a world of color to a world of black and white. But as the rebellious, sexually voracious Jennifer begins to disrupt the idyllic nature of Pleasantville, this begins a change in their world where things begin having real color, eventually spreading to the denizens of Pleasantville themselves. As more and more people break from their usual routines and do what they feel like doing, they become "colorized". I felt the greatest use of this technique had to be when David is driving a vintage car up this steep roadway, with pink leaves from the trees blowing in the wind in the black and white section of Pleasantville, but when he gets to the top, we're in full color. This transition is beautiful to watch, and I wish other movies employed ideas such as this, because images like that become ingrained into your head.

And here is the other wonderful thing... beyond it's imaginative use of color, technicolor, and black and white usage, all of the characters in the film go through their own metamorphosis. Where David (or Bud, as he's known in Pleasantville) was once shy and not confident, now leads a quiet, yet vibrantly 'colored' rebellion against those who would want to suppress the changes occurring in their world (an interesting nod, really, to racism and the fear of change, when we see signs in the windows of businesses that say "No Coloreds", and book burnings). Jennifer learns to slow down from being promiscuous and take life at an easier, more mature pace. Bud's co-worker Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels) is secretly an aspiring painter, that, after being exposed to the works of modern masters Cezanne, Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, among others, through an art book Bud gives him, shines with his artistic talent. And with an extra-marital affair with Bud's mother Betty Parker (Joan Allen, who looks the spitting image of what I'd imagine a 1950's housewife to look like), we see that the world of Pleasantville is much more complicated then it seems. There is not a weak performance to be found here, all are equally great.

For as complex as the story becomes, it never becomes muddled. The entire length of the film, the story flows smoothly down satisfying paths. Characters change in what I'd consider a natural way as their world and themselves change. I thought one of the funniest scenes in the film had to be when Betty is inquiring about sex with Jennifer, a reversal of roles with the birds and bees talk, and after telling her about masturbation, as Betty gives herself her first orgasm in the hot bath she takes, things turn into color all around her until a tree outside bursts into real flames. This is both funny and smile inducing, like the rest of this charming flick. The curiosity the people of Pleasantville have with David and Jennifer is amusing, as they become enlightened more and more from being exposed to knowledge beyond Pleasantville's world.

My hat is also off to the screenplay, as I couldn't help from smiling like an idiot with the self awareness that all the characters have. Not only that, but I love how everyone is such a character of their time. In the beginning David and Jennifer are very much 90's teenagers, and their contrast to Pleasantville's 1950's mentality teenagers and citizens is smirk inducing to say the least. It never becomes corny or out of place, and I got a kick out of that fictional, idealistic world their thrown into; a clear pun on the sensationalized view some hold of that time period.

Really, to say this is an intelligent, well executed drama (not entirely sure how to label the movie, as it has moments of drama, humor, you name it. It sort of transcends those labels) would be to sell it short. You can watch 100 movies, and I bet the imagery from this film would still stick in your mind, I know it does in mine. A set up that only makes you more curious as it plays out, and a 2nd half that slyly plays on the racial/political history of America, Pleasantville was truly one of the stand out films of the 90's, and if you haven't had the pleasure of watching this one yet, you owe it to yourself to check out this gem.

Grade: A

Hope you've enjoyed the read! (All words, ideas are mine. Similarities to other reviews is... well you know the drill by now)