Rating: 
Summary: Unpleasantville
Review: A meandering film, at best, with little or no internal logic to its plot OR the conclusions reached by the principle characters, PLEASANTVILLE is worth a single viewing for the stellar performances of Joan Allen (who would go on to THE CONTENDER) and REESE WITHERSPOON (the beautiful comic delight who would graduate to the likes of LEGALLY BLONDE).PLEASANTVILLE tries to be a comedy with a message, and that message is simple: the world, the way we see it, may not necessarily be the world as it is. While it's script is chock full of wonderful little scenes of substance and mirth, a film is a culmulative product: in the end, it all has to add up to something. Sadly, the film's message is lost is a hackneyed comment on color when it could've been about so much, much more. Worth a single viewing, if only for the performances mentioned above.
Rating: 
Summary: Sugar-coated satanism
Review: *Pleasantville* has a lot in common with the movie *Chocolat* : both tell the story of two strangers who bring colour to a black-and-white town of the late 1950s by upsetting the traditional value-system of the locals and leading them into various temptations. But if *Chocolat* was a brazen attack on Catholicism, *Pleasantville* targets the «normalcy» of suburbia in the US of the 1950s, or rather of «Pleasantville», a caricature of its portrayals in the sitcoms of the period. What the movie has to say is that the people who live in Pleasantville- who either stand for the people of the 1950s, or their TV counterparts, or both, or neither- are so dumb that their books have blank pages and that if their daily routine undergoes the slightest alteration, they will be so completely befuddled as to go round and round in circles until some bright teenager from the nineties rescues them. Fortunately for them, their conservatism is soon challenged by two such youngsters who introduce them to the values their decade inherited from the sixties and all the iconoclastic eras of history : abstract art, rock’n roll, women’s lib, *Catcher in the Rye*, pre-marital sex and adultery – to which, if the movie had not been so cautious not to blow its family-movie cover, might have been added tobacco, alcohol, drugs and Marilyn Manson. In what is probably the most depraved scene in the whole movie, a mother is taught about the existence of «sex» by a girl she believes to be her own daughter (who introduces her speech by the hypocritical modern bromide «when you really love someone...», even though she is currently having casual sex with a boy she is physically attracted to but has nothing but scorn for) and told that she can experience it on her own. We are later led to understand that her «daughter» has given her instructions on how to «please herself», to use the fashionable euphemism, when she applies them in her bath and the intensity of her experience sets a tree on fire. Now the loss of innocence in this black-and-white town never goes unnoticed, for all those who bite into the apple suddenly acquire colour (suggesting, inevitably, a flourishing into something better, with colour representing the character’s buried passions and instincts, healthily given free reign), so that soon war breaks out between the inquisitorial black-and-white forces of reaction (standing for Republicanism, McCarthyism and the religious right) and the persecuted «coloured people», a bunch of enlightened liberals who just seek the freedom to «express themselves». And if you wonder what the cryptic last scene may mean, here is my interpretation : on a purely dramatic level, the screenwriter simply could not make up his mind about the mother’s affair, and whether she would leave her husband after cheating on him or not, so he simply chose to have her do both. From a philosophical point of view, this scene represents the logical outcome of the emancipation from all constraints preached by the film : even though the inhabitants of Pleasantville have gotten rid of the laws of (« bourgeois ») morality, they are still subject to the ultimate obstacle to whim-worship, the law of identity, which says that what is A cannot be non-A at the same time and in the same respect. In the last scene of the film, this law is simply transcended, so that the mother can both be cheating on her husband (and enjoy the pleasures of adultery) and not be cheating on her husband (and still be an irreproachably faithful wife.) More colloquially, she can have her cake and eat it too, as can the screenwriter. *Pleasantville* is a big thank you to the sixties for saving us from the fifties, and to Satan for giving us the guts to stand up to God, experience evil and leave His mindless Garden of Eden. Interestingly, the Office for Film & Broadcasting, calling « its depiction of the repressed 1950s vs. the supposedly enlightened 1990s ... simplistic at best », gave it an A-IV rating (« Adults, with reservations ».)
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful satire
Review: This movie is a breakthrough on almost every level. It's constantly admirable, different and beautiful to watch. In it we see a pair of twins (played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) transported into a 50's black-and-white TV show called 'Pleasantville'. There they are forced to take on the personas of Budd and Betty-Sue. Yet the black-and-white world on drab 'Pleasantville' is injected with colour by the modern ideas that the kids bring with them. This movie takes a totally different look at the old-fashioned family values of the era whilst showing how unrealistic and restraining they are, whilst making gentle fun out of it at the same time. For example, a group of men stand around aghast at a man's shirt that has been burnt by the iron, with one protester exclaiming 'what's next?' incredulously. The central idea is lovely to watch as we see the world transform into colour - cherry blossom, roses andrain all impinging on the dull lifestyle of the town. Not only that but it's effortlessly clever, with the 'coloureds' eventually being forced aside, rock 'n' roll being banned, and imaginative fiction being burnt. It is also truly inspirational, with our heroes being given a free rein to do what they like, to please themselves for once. In such a liberated world, the geeky character can be the hero, the shallow girl can get her education and the housewife can follow her heart. Whilst this often-done theme of remaining true to yourself is often handled wrongly, 'Pleasantville' gets it just right. Not only that but thanks to some truly excellent performances from a fantastic cast - including Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels and William H Macy - it is often incredibly touching. It's simply wonderful, with everything balanced just right: there's never too much schamltz and it's not too preachy either. Sublime.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasantville
Review: This is a beautiful and moving film it tells the story of two modern day teenagers who are transported back to the ideallistic 1950's tv world of pleasantville Joan Allen and Reese Witherspoon give excellent performances.
Rating:
Summary: COLOUR CRAZY
Review: I LOVE the use of colour in this film.The story is clear and has several humerous parts espescially in the first half of the film.The use of colour is amazing in relation to the plot and there is also a rascism theme which Garry Ross has incorporated with change and acceptance.The characters were well developed and convincing especially Joan Allen as the estranged Betty-A great film (P.S My young brother James liked the film although he found some parts scary}
Rating:
Summary: A visual masterpiece flawed by thematic pretensions.
Review: What promises to be a piece of post-modern conceptualism a la 'The Truman Show' or 'Being John Malkovich', turns out to be an Allan/Harold Bloomian plea for cultural conservatism. TV starts out in the movie as a medium of escape from the trials of everyday life, and of transformation, capable of dismantling certainties of time and place. It ends up being seen as a propaganda machine for a mind-numbingly reactionary worldview, a wallpaper of consensus barely covering fascist mob instincts. In its place, the Great Liberal Humanities, especially Books (including that over-rated whine 'Catcher in the Rye') and Art, are seen as portals of imagination and freedom. Of course, this is, as usual, the familiar canon of Dead White Males - women may be allowed model for paintings or study books, but it is the men who create. Clearly, in a nightmare 'Blue Velvet' world of unthinking suburbia, there can be no place for African Americans, but when this world is turned upside down, there is still little place for them, even in terms of cultural influence (beyond token nods to jazz, which seem more like the director's taste than the film's teenagers). This blindspot becomes actually offensive when the town is divided into monochrome and 'colored' citizens - white people, having appropriated everything else, have even stolen black suffering! So what had seemed progressive with its satire of small-town mentality leading to bourgeois violence and book-burning, ends up becoming as conservative and misogynistic as the world it satirises, just as in Frank Capra's famous 'liberal' comedies of the 30s - indeed, the final third of 'Pleasantville' is broken-backed by shrieking Capraesque demagogary. This is because the 'critique' is framed in terms of individual happiness - there is no question in the film of overturning political or economic structures, of blowing up banks, setting up collectives or starting revolutions. I mention all this because I felt the ideology nearly ruined what had been a truly wonderful film. I don't care what ultimate values Gary Ross gives them - the play with black-and-white and colour is given such an emotional intensity that each blush of pink smudging the prevailing monochrome makes your heart literally skip a beat. Ross's mise-en-scne and sense of irony prove someonse steeped in the modes of the 1950s melodrama - it's a shame he ultimately fudges their truly radical critique.
Rating:
Summary: Intrigueing to start; provocative at its end.
Review: At first, this movie appeared to be a fantasy interesting enough to sit down and watch at the theatre and not much else.
However, if the movie is able to work its magic on you, you will find within it a profound message that, normally, is not carried within the quintisential teen flick.
But this, keep in mind, is not a quintisential flick.
It is a movie that, twenty years ago, simply doesn't get made. Thoughts of prejudice were, at that time, too fresh in the minds of most.
Thank God it was written in a time of political correctness when most of us can still recall fifties T.V. shows, but also in a time of imagination and a time when the ability to spread positive messages through film is embraced.
In short, if you elect (subtle Witherspoon refference) not to purchase this film, you are doing yourself a disservice.
Rating:
Summary: Dull Retro-Suburbanites Explode -- Yadda-Yadda-Dada-BOO!
Review: In "Pleasantville," Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are suddenly, unpreparedly, magically transported, by an unusual TV remote, from their 90's frazzled-single-parent home, to the mythic, happy wonderland of 50's era sitcoms. Once there, they are faced with the question of "to be or not to be," and if it's "to be," well, what does that mean?? My title is intended to suggest the surreal, spooky, psychological bouleversement that the reality-challenged black and white TV characters experience, when faced with the sexually take-charge attitude of Reese W., and with the sudden, inexplicable introduction of color into their previously humdrum, lackluster lives. Jeff Daniels and Joan Allen almost steal the show, in a beautiful love story that probably started out as sort of a subplot. They're both fantastic. I felt really sorry for William Macy's character, whose wife (Joan A.) is suddenly evolving beyond his comprehension, but basically, the intended mood of this movie is just too liberating and exhilarating to be particularly easy on stolid, father figure characters. He wasn't "the bad guy," (the late, great J.T. Walsh got that part, to the extent that there can be said to BE a bad guy in this complex film), but he was certainly a "fall guy" from a plotting perspective. It might have been nice if he somehow acquired the magical TV remote, and made his way into some traditional sitcom or movie where he might have been happier, like "The Waltons" or "The Bob Newhart Show." The fun of this movie is in watching the high school kids go happily berserk, as they learn about sex, airballs in basketball, and other unsettling topics. The basic theme is about figuring out who you truly are, in a world that expects you to play a part, and finding a way to live your own life. Tobey M. and Reese W.'s characters both have unexpected lessons to learn, which I won't reveal here, and it's a lot of fun seeing them find their ways... As the movie goes along, the symbolism is too blatant in places, but I don't care. It's always fun and interesting. This is a great movie. Definitely two thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: very entertaining movie
Review: I watched this movie whenever it came on cable and I have probably seen it about ten times. Unfortunately, it has not been on STARZ for quite a while. I decided to buy this DVD because I have not seen the movie in a while. Pleasantville is a really interesting movie that I would definitely recommend movie lovers to see. Personally, I think that it was one of the best films to come out during the last five years.
Rating:
Summary: An intriguing fantasy enhanced by a superb cast
Review: "Pleasantville," written and directed by Gary Ross, is a quirky and rewarding blend of comedy and fantasy. The reality-bending premise of the film is simple: a contemporary teen brother-sister duo (the superb Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) are zapped into the world of the brother's favorite 1950s black-and-white television sitcom. This "Twilight Zone"-ish premise leads to both humor and social commentary as the two adjust to life in the type of mythic American small town seen in classic TV. "Pleasantville" evokes "The Wizard of Oz" as the teens are rendered black-and-white in their new environment; this device leads to some remarkable visual effects as their presence gradually causes color to bleed into this world. Maguire and Witherspoon are just part of a superb, multigenerational ensemble cast. Joan Allen is particularly impressive as their 50s era mom; look for the scene where she serves up a mountainous, cholesterol-laden 50s style breakfast to an appalled Witherspoon. The plot and concept, in my opinion, don't hold together completely by the story's end, and the film's message of tolerance seems a bit obvious. But Ross' script is undeniably inventive and intelligent, and the film as a whole is well complemented by memorable visual flourishes. Overall, a worthwhile trip.
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