Rating: 
Summary: The Most Magical Movie Experience In A Long Time
Review: Pleasantville is a marvel of cinema. Every single frame of this masterpiece is movie gold. Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon star as brother and sister who are magically transported into Tobey's favorite black and white 1950's television show called "Pleasantville", thanks to a mysterious cable repairman played by the great Don Knotts. The brother and sister take on the roles as the siblings on the T.V. show. The June and Ward Cleaver-like parents are played brilliantly by Joan Allen and William H. Macy. Tobey is all into it, but Reese is so horiffied by the whole deal. But, things start to happen. When these two normal and "real" people start to effect the town and the lives of the people in it, things slowly start to turn to color. Seeing the colored objects(or people)against the black and white color is jaw droppingly beautiful. Issues of color come up when the town board are against these "colored" people. It's a tough and timely subject matter that is dealt in a superbly brilliant manner. The scene with Tobey driving a girl in the fancy old car through a black and white winding road with colored leaves falling and Etta James' "At Last" playing in the background is one of the most dazzling and perfect scenes I've seen in a movie. It's perfect. The actors are all incredible. Joan Allen is always strong and solid. She is perfect here. Jeff Daniels, as the malt shop owner, gives one of his best performances since "The Purple Rose Of Cairo". Don Knotts can still make anybody laugh just by sitting there. He is a master comedian. This film is about as perfect as a film can possibly get. This will go down as a classic fairy tale of epic proportions. Do yourself a great favor and go to "Pleasantville".
Rating: 
Summary: Don Knotts still can make people laugh.
Review: This social satire film about two teens from the 90's who get transported to a TV world of the 1950's is pretty cleaver and Gary Ross should be thanked for casting Don Knotts in this movie, thus showing that Don still has the ability to make people laugh after all these years.
Rating: 
Summary: A LIFE WITHOUT COLOUR
Review: The always brilliant Tobey Maguire (who will soon skyrocket to superstardom with his starring role in the upcoming Spiderman) stars with the talented Reese Witherspoon in this entertaining family drama about a brother and sister who are somehow transported into a 1950s television show. The film begins with Witherspoon as an airheaded, shallow popular girl with absolutely no interest in college or much of anything beyond sex, fashion and talking on the phone. Maguire, as her brother, is a semi-geeky kid who is obsessed with a 50s sitcom set in idyllic Pleasantville. As he is preparing to watch a marathon of the show, he and his sister get into a fight about what to watch and somehow end up breaking the remote control. Don Knotts plays a strange tv repairman who gives them a remote control that zaps them both into the 1950s. When they first arrive in this idyllic tv world, Witherspoon's character is haughty and angry, while Maguire really loves this new world. As time passes, and they have to integrate themselves into the tv world, they find that they change it and turn it from black and white into colour. The film is a clever concept, the acting is lovely, and the changes the characters go through in their 'odyssey' through 1950s tv family idealism are interesting. Joan Allen, William H. Macy, and the late JT Walsh also star.
Rating:
Summary: Mind-boggling
Review: This movie is one of the most mind-boggling I've ever seen. More than a year after I've watched it for the first time, it is still opening my eyes, opening them so wide that I get sleepless when thinking about it at night.For this movie is about the fate of humanity. This movie is about why it is better to suffer here on earth than any kind of beatitude in a blissful paradise. This movie is about the inevitability and the adventure of change, it just shouts CHANGE! CHANGE! CHANGE! at you, and the backwards message of the movie is that if you don't, then you'll fade to grey. This movie shows you why civilizations clinging to the past are bound to disappear like dinosaurs because you just cannot prevent change, that children will be thinking differently than parents because this is the way humanity progresses, and that the one motor for change, for putting color in our world, for making it different, is the human mind and its craving for discovery. Gary Ross, you're a genius.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Showcase For A Great Movie
Review: Gary Ross has always, by his own admission, done films with odd concepts, whether it be a boy in a man's body (Big), or a man who looks exactly like the President (Dave). This and other insights make the Platinum edition of "Pleasentville" a perfect showcase of one of the best films of 1998. Fine screenwriting and nuanced acting are bolstered by special effects that are a character in and of itself. This is one of the best DVD's I've seen, with full director/writer commentary, great featurettes on the special effects, and fascinating storyboards. Hell, the DVD even asks you to adjust your TV colors so that the movie can be seen properly. A must have DVD, especially for showing off to your friends who are still skeptical about DVDs or widescreen.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly Surprising
Review: I have to admit, I had no desire to see this movie. My husband wanted to see it, so begrudgingly, I obliged. Thankfully, I obliged. This movie is wonderful! Reese and Tobey gave really good performances, as did Joan Allen and Jeff Daniels. The movie was actually very deep and thought-provoking - many "layers." I can't say enough good things about it, it was a very good movie!
Rating:
Summary: A Well-Made Liberal Satire of the 1950's
Review: If you enjoy "serious" films that offer a great deal of social satire and commentary, then you'll probably like "Pleasantville" - but only if you agree with filmmaker Gary Ross's point of view. On the surface "Pleasantville" is a gentle comedy-fantasy film in which two modern teenagers (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) are magically transported to the world of a classic black-and-white television show from the fifties. As with "Leave It to Beaver" or "Father Knows Best", the town of Pleasantville and its' residents are basically perfect - everyone is friendly, the high-school basketball team never misses a shot, the library is full of books with no words (thus no chance to be "disturbed" by "liberal" ideas), and no one seems to know anything about sex. Naturally, these two teens from the nineties immediately begin to disrupt things. Witherspoon's character immediately dislikes the goody-goody attitude, social conformity, and sexual restrictions of the town, and she soon begins "converting" the town's teenagers to her way of living. She starts her crusade by sleeping with the star of the basketball team - whereupon he goes from black-and-white to color and starts missing his shots in basketball. She also tells her fifties-style mother (Joan Allen) about sex, which prompts her to realize how unhappy she is with her Dagwood Bumstead hubby (William H. Macy) and to start a love affair with the local soda jerk (Jeff Daniels). Maguire's character at first disagrees with his sister - he initially enjoys the "simpler" values and lifestyle in Pleasantville - but he eventually comes around to his sister's viewpoint and decides that the town needs to shed its old-fashioned values and innocence. As the people of Pleasantville begin to have sex, read books, and experience "real" emotions, they change into color. However, some of Pleasantville's residents - the older white male elite - don't like the changes and try to force everyone who has become "colored" to change back to black-and-white. This leads to a showdown between the newly "colored" liberated folk and the black-and-white Old Guard in the town's Perry Mason-style courtroom, where Maguire's character prevails over the angry town leaders. Although this movie is beautifully filmed and the acting is good, I thought that the film's creator, Gary Ross, was far too heavy-handed with his symbolism - the film comes across as preachy, especially at the end. Ross is a liberal Democrat (I'm not just saying that, he's made other films such as "Dave" in which the heroes are always liberals and the bad guys are always conservatives). Basically, this film is an unintended parody of how sixties-style liberals see the 1950's - the people in Pleasantville are conformist, emotionally dead, and "unfulfilled". However, when these modern "liberated" teens get to Pleasantville, they teach everyone how to "fulfill" their potential, usually by having sex, breaking the rules, and opposing the conservative white bullies who run the town (any similarities to modern politics IS intended). As a creative comedy-fantasy movie, "Pleasantville" is a "pleasant" and charming, if rather slow-moving film, but as a social satire it's too heavy-handed, preachy and superficial to be really effective.
Rating:
Summary: If someone says this movie is bad, I hope they're joking
Review: Wow. This is a really good movie. Like everyone else, I have a billion reasons for saying so. Let's just go straight down the list. It's well thought out. The plot is pretty consistent and doesn't leave much out (except why David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are there in the first place). My favorite characters were David and Jeff Daniels's character, Mr. Johnson. I liked the courtroom scene (very affecting) and the fire in the tree.The movie reminds me a bit eerily of Lois Lowry's The Giver (was anyone waiting for me to mention that?). But only in a few ways: most notably, the color. All in all, I thought this movie was cool. It's turned into one of my favorite movies, as Tobey Maguire turned into one of my favorite actors. Rent it now if you never have. It's a true must-see.
Rating: 
Summary: Things are black and white for Gary Ross
Review: This file should really be subtitled, "Let's pretend the Sixties actually made things better." While this movie is a thrill to watch and the story is not too bad, one never loses the feeling that he or she is being lectured. Ross fails to heed his own admonition about black and white. The fifties are painted as an illusion at best or an oppressive, fascist society at worst. But don't worry; a little free sex will fix everything. Of course they throw a little book burning for legitimacy. I've got the sequel, "Return to Pleasantville." Good old Bud can come back to the town to find the town populated by poor single mothers with a thriving abortion facility, the malt shop now a STD clinic and all this in brilliant color. I understand that Pleasantville was not intended to be an Isben play, but a little more depth to the fifties characters would have greatly improved the film. BTW, the Civil Rights Movement started in the Fifties.
Rating:
Summary: remote traveling teens
Review: I think this is one of the best movies I've ever seen. A cute comedy. A brother and a sister fighting over a remote until it crashes into the wall and breaks. The repair man comes, gives them a new one and they get transported into the tv sitcom Pleasantiville. Bringing color to the world and disrupting it. I think this movie is super. I highly reccomend it.
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