Pleasantville

Plot synopsis:
David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are twins and attend the same high school. Jennifer is concerned mainly with her appearance, relationships and popularity, while David watches a lot of television, has few friends, and is socially awkward. Their mother (Jane Kaczmarek) leaves Jennifer and David alone at home while she heads out of town for a rendezvous with her younger boyfriend. The twins begin to fight over the use of the downstairs TV; Jennifer wants to watch an MTV concert with her date, Mark Davis, while David hopes to watch a marathon of his favorite show, Pleasantville.Pleasantville is a black-and-white '50s sitcom, a cross between Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best that centers around the idyllic Parker family George (William H. Macy), his wife Betty (Joan Allen), and their two children, Bud and Mary Sue. David is an expert on every episode and wants to watch the marathon so he can win a $1,000 trivia contest. During the fight between David and Jennifer, the remote control breaks and the TV cannot be turned on manually. A mysterious TV repairman (Don Knotts) shows up uninvited, and quizzes David on Pleasantville before giving him a strange-looking, retro-styled remote control. The repairman leaves, and David and Jennifer promptly resume fighting. However, through some mechanism of the remote control, they are transported into the television, ending up in the Parkers' black and white Pleasantville living room. David tries to reason with the repairman (who communicates with him through the Parkers' TV set) but succeeds only in chasing him away. David and Jennifer must now pretend they are, respectively, Bud and Mary Sue Parker.Jennifer is dismayed to be stranded, but she and David begin exposing the town to issues such as sex, personal freedoms, styles of art, and literature. Pleasantville soon begins changing at a rapid pace, and previously black and white objects and people begin to develop full and vibrant colors. After initially wanting to leave, David discovers a sense of belonging he lacked in the real world, so when the TV repairman returns and berates him for altering the show so much, David turns off the TV, relinquishing his ability to go home in the process. While the mayor is concerned, people in Pleasantville begin to explore hidden abilities and revel in their new freedoms.The town fathers, who see the changes as eating away at the town's moral values, remain unchanged. Certain youths, such as Skip and Whitey and their friends, also remain unaffected. They resolve to do something about their increasingly distant wives and disaffected youths. Behavior similar to Nazism, as well as racial segregation and subsequent rioting similar to that of the African-American Civil Rights Movement start to occur, incited by a nude painting of Betty on the window of Bud's boss Bill Johnsons soda shop; the window is smashed with a park bench, and the soda shop is destroyed, books are burned, and anyone who is "colored" is harassed in the streets. Bud begins to grow into a strong leader, advocating resistance to the new "Pleasantville Code of Conduct", a list of regulations preventing people from visiting the library and Lovers' Lane, playing loud music, or using colorful paints. Bud/David and Bill are arrested and tried in court for violating the paint rules, but ultimately everyone in the court room changes colors and Mayor Bob leaves in horror when he is exposed as having changed as well.Eventually, the entire town becomes colored, and the people of Pleasantville are finally introduced to the rest of the world. Televisions at the television repair shop now display full-colored images of various scenic vistas around the world, and Main Street, which had previously been a circuit that led back to its beginning again, now leads away to other towns and cities.Jennifer chooses to stay behind in neighboring Springfield, while says goodbye to Betty and his new girlfriend David returns home using the remote control after promising to return and check up on her soon. He finds his mother crying in the kitchen, distraught over her life and her failed relationship. She complains to him that her life was not supposed to run this undesirable course. David replies, "It's not 'supposed' to be 'anything'."Back in Pleasantville, the citizens and Jennifer are enjoying their new freedoms and colors. Betty is seen sitting next to George on a park bench. George asks what will happen next and Betty admits incredulously that she doesn't know. When she asks George, he laughs upon realizing that he doesn't know either. The camera focuses on Betty for a second as she relaxes against the bench, then she turns once more toward the other side of the bench. The camera pans to the side to reveal Bill Johnson sitting where George had been. He says "I guess I don't know either," and smiles.

Tags: fantasy, whimsical, cute, alternate reality, psychedelic, satire, sentimental

Review:
It's an even bigger injustice that it did not get a nomination for best screenplay or cinematography.In the hands of another writer, this movie could have been made as just a parody of 1950's sitcoms like "Leave It To Beaver" or "Ozzie and Harriet." But this film isn't about how clichéd those series look decades later.
That's why the past is sometimes seen as "the good ol' days." Pleasantville does not represent how the 50's actually were but rather an idealization of what people THINK the 50's were---no one had sex, everyone got along swell, and life was fairly easy.
It isn't just about making out, but having the OPTION to make out.Another reviewer claimed that this film was an attack on the 50's, but David and Jennifer could very easily have been dumped in the world of "The Brady Bunch", "Gilligan's Island" , or "Batman." But setting "Pleasantville" in a 1950's sitcom allows for the brilliant metaphor of black and white versus color.
Similarly, David does not bloom into color until he breaks out of his aloofness and defends his "mother." Compare the way he ignores his real mother at the beginning of the film to how he consoles and comforts her at the end to see how much David has changed.I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.
There are a lot of films out there that are very entertaining and/or very moving--like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "Titanic." Movies like "Pleasantville" which challenge the audience and force them to think are very rare, and should be treasured by the discerning filmgoer..
I thoroughly enjoyed "Pleasantville" from the 'Once upon a time' through the film fading to black.The acting was top notch all around, as was the use of special effects; in very few films has colour been used so effectively that it can convey a story seemingly without help from dialogue or music.I can see how some people would perceive it as merely another mouthpiece of liberalism, but I watched it twice, and I only noticed it attacking bigotry and censorship.
What was wrong wasn't that these people were living according conservative values, but that they didn't really choose those values in the first place!I like the fact that the film was bold, and that it made its point as directly as it contrasted the black and white with the splotches of Technicolour.
This superbly mounted and completely winning fantasy starred Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon as a contemporary teenage brother and sister who are magically transported into a black and white television show called "Pleasantville", a show similar to "Leave it to Beaver" or "I Love Lucy", where everyone in the town knows each other, where the fire department only saves cats from trees and never put out fires and where there are no pages in the books or toilets in the bathrooms.
Maguire's character is a "Pleasantville" trivia expert so he knows everyone there and everything that's going to happen but sis Witherspoon is a stranger in a strange land whose introduction of 1990's sensibilities to the citizens of this town brings about extraordinary changes.
The film is beautifully made with a very smart screenplay and superb performances, the best of which is by Joan Allen, who is luminous as Betty, the mother in the sitcom who is shocked at first but learns to accept the 1990's coming to Pleasantville.
The film appears to be in black and white, but as each character opens their mind or changes from the perception of the Pleasantville tv show, then they begin to gain color.
several of the scenes are priceless, and as someone before commented, the drive through a black and white scenery with coloured blossom weaving through the soft winds will leave you breathless.in short, if you feel like watching a wonderful movie, catch this one and be impressed; try to follow the patterns every character exhibits and think about what the colour means in that sense, how it brings life back, how change is life..
The basic theme here being that the meaningful life requires breaking out of rigid, dull and conventional roles, this film's story sucks two teens back through their television set to a fictitious 1950s sitcom named "Pleasantville," where life is in gray-tones until they start breaking the rules.
As a metaphor for change or lost innocence it gets a bit tired but for most it's very effective as a way of seeing people's true feelings come out.The cast are great - Maguire and Witherspoon are both good (yes, even Witherspoon!), but the real strength comes from the adult support cast.
The father character is shown as being a nice guy, who never accosts his family, provides for them and seems to do nothing wrong, yet this also portrays him as being boring and therefore needs to change.The movie started with an interesting premise and had really good acting and good special effects, I just found it difficult to stomach the frequent negative attitudes about males and the male bashing.
But it is also one that should be tempered with responsibility and reason.Tobey Maguire plays the proverbial Adam, a boy that loves everything to do with the 'pleasant' world of forties and fifties television, until he and his sister, Reese Witherspoon who plays the also proverbial Eve, are zapped into the television world of Pleasantville.In this world, everything is black and white, until Eve feeds the apple to an unsuspecting boy.
Pleasantville is a really messy, unfocused film that has nothing to do but define its' own atmosphere for over two hours, while trying to convince us that there is a much deeper meaning behind it all.I'm no expert on shows from the fifties, and I am not a product of that era, but I have of course watched many shows from that period and I understand what the movie was going for; it was trying to show us that things aren't as picture perfect as they appeared in those shows, and that change into the modern world isn't so bad--it just makes us "free".
I also think that the characters from those shows also knew that there was a world beyond their own town, that there were days when it would rain, and that the local sports teams didn't always win.Director Gary Ross seems pretty unsure of his material himself, and that is probably why the film keeps defining itself; within the last half-hour of the movie, a young boy punches another.
The film then TEDIOUSLY expands this single joke commonly throughout the movie, showing us shocking images of kinky sex acts, some I can't even mention here, for my comments won't be posted (HINT: one involves a popular number in the double digits), and when we're not seeing the acts of sex or the blown-away expressions of those who have just experienced it, we get some really "shocking" conversation; Reese Witherspoon has been shacking up with every guy in sight, then educates her mother on ways to "please" herself--Oh, MY!
Another shock, provoking embarrassed and courteous laughs from the audience.The final scenes of the film dissolve into complete disorder; Don Knotts starts getting angry at the kids for their disruption of Pleasantville, and goes quite mad, but what was he expecting in the first place, and why does his demeanor change so radically from that of the first act?
She is transported with her brother, but feels she has entered Nerdville, and so sets out to change her surroundings to something she is more familiar with, something with a more 90's sensibility, like, say with...sex?This is actually an interesting premise, especially since the 50's world is in black and white, and only gradually introduced to color.
The movie is technically clever, well-acted and beautifully photographed - but that's where the good stuff ends.The point of view of this film is that people in the 1950s were stupid, complacent, unaware and uncaring of the world outside their immediate environs.
Leave It To Beaver of the late 50s early 60s and consider where you would rather be.Pleasantville is a movie with little understanding and appreciation of the period in American history that it attempts to belittle by its revisionist portrayal.This film is not funny, witty nor insightful.
because you certainly wont be requiring it once the film begins.Yet another incomplete plot with pretensions of social commentary added as an afterthought.What rubbish.Luckily I had free tickets so the only thing Im really angry at is the incredible waste of time the whole thing was-not to mention the tragic mess made of a fine Lennon tune(ok, THAT wasnt too bad).Also, as a parting thought, does anybody REALLY think Toby Maguire can act?
While it contains several good points about the same-old same-old style of Pleasantville,and it's heart is in the right place, there are different ways that they could have made this movie without filling it with sex.
He's ready to settle into a "Pleasantville" marathon - a black and white TV sitcom, but as laid out in the premise, they instead find themselves playing the brother and sister in the show.The film follows how their modern ways affect the characters in the show.
When brother and sister David(Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer(Reese Witherspoon) are sucked into an old black and white sitcom named Pleasantville, courtesy of a TV repairman(Don Knotts), early hilarity ensues as they cope with their situation.
There are so many great performances so many well written scenes, so much wonderful cinematography as John Lindley expertly blends together scenes of color and black and white, aided by the most purposeful use of digital effects ever seen in a film.
Another interesting perspective I had of the concept was as a kind of reflection of American culture, ranging from the 1950s generation gap to the later civil-rights movement (check out the "No Coloreds" sign in a store window).I won't try to nutshell the movie, since the characters endure a whirlwind of change and turmoil.
And director Gary Ross got just about everything else about "Pleasantville" half-right, which makes for a halfway decent viewing experience, nowhere near as bad as it could be, but not as good either.The look of the scenes in the sitcom small-town is half-right -- the costumes, hairstyles and set decorations are perfect, but the pretty black-and-white cinematography and odd camera angles are more reminiscent of an art movie by Scorcese or Woody Allen than grainy single-set 50s TV.
David—an intelligent but socially inept teenager—and his twin sister Jennifer—pretty, promiscuous, and desperate to be popular—are at odds with one another until they abruptly find themselves trapped inside Pleasantville, a 1950s black-and-white sitcom where tradition, naiveté, and old-fashioned values run the idyllic little town like clockwork.
Pleasantville is a fabulous idea that tries to cram a heck of a lot of high concept into its running time.Modern teenagers are transported by a convenient remote control into an apparent utopia within the small town setting of a 1950s television show.Fairly innocent conflicts regarding 'geography' and sexual mores give way to a more serious agenda concerning small-minded prejudice, bigotry and the value of individualism.
There is much use of symbolism, particularly the gradual depiction of characters and objects in colour rather than black and white.The acting is of a high quality, with seasoned performers such as Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels and William Macy providing a solid background to (relative) newcomers Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon.However, some of the messages and symbolism is alternatively muddled (the timing of the transformations to colour) and heavy-handed (the signs that start to spring up saying 'no coloureds'.Having said that, there is a lot to like about 'Pleasantville', even if the loftiness of its ambitions is only partially met by its success.Worth a look..
But I've seen Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, Andy Griffith, etc., all of which provided the black-and-white idealized fictions of American life that are the subjects of Gary Ross's movie Pleasantville.Why have I seen this movie about 15 times and watch it again every chance I get?
But 'Pleasantville' is so much more than I expected.It touches a very interesting theme of what people think of the 1950's America based on the movies and sitcoms.
And, yet, it made no mention that it's due to a lack of common sense and rampant, unprotected sex that this world is rife with STDs and unwanted pregnancies.I found it really hard to believe that the characters living in Pleasantville (before the colors of sex arrived) were so bloody clueless that they didn't know that a whole, wide world existed out there beyond the idealistic borders of their quaint, little town.Like, didn't these innocent-ones ever watch movies and TV?
I'd like to see someone make a movie about an immoral society and show how someone can come in with moral values and change black and white to color.
(Unlike much of modern programming, which is so pandering and graphic -- even early in the day -- that it would have been considered pornography 25 years ago.) If you actually WATCH shows from the 50s like "Beaver" and "Father Knows Best", instead of just clips or what you THINK you remember, these were actually not bad, and not as bland as "Pleasantville" wishes to remember them.
I wanted to see Pleasantville because it looked like a movie that had some neat visual effects and poked some harmless fun at a more docile time from America's past.What I saw was a movie which went from subtle hints that morality stinks to blatant signs that any moral person has absolutely no right to live.I'm not going to go into all the issues addressed (way too many in one movie...), but basically, if you had/have morals, you were/are a boring person with a closed mind.
I know 'moral' can be subjective, but this movie is just one more example of making 'good' people look like freaks by adjusting the norm to fit Hollywood's ideals..
Two 1990's teens, David and Jennifer, living unhappily dysfunctional lives, gets magically transported into Davids favorite 1950's Black and White sitcom, Pleasantville where they turn the world upside down for the residents of the fictional town by introducing many 1990's things (slang words, culture, sex, etc.) into the Pleasantville's 1950's universe which in turn changes people, plants, even inanimate objects into color.I identify with David in that I too was brought up (I'm in my early thirties now) in a dysfunctional family, only a thousand times worse than his, and I also sought an escape from that by watching endless syndicated re-runs of all kinds of classic tv shows (where life was perfect, people were happy, people loved each other), to the point where I had every line and every piece of useless trivia memorized from all of those shows.
It's swell.Mr. Simpson: Great!Jennifer/Mary Sue: You know that guy?David/Bud: Yeah, he owns the Hardware store.But Pleasantville, which starts out as a comedy/fantasy film, changes gears midway and turns into a sociological/political argument against the fifties and against any modern day romanticism of those years which almost ruins the movie.
But there are some things that they were doing so right back then (lower crime rate, lower illegitimacy rate, an educational system that was the envy of the world, fewer divorces, more two parent families and fewer single parents, a healthy respect for religion, children and teenagers treated their elders with more respect, profanity wasnt a part of the everyday language, a Hollywood that was still producing mostly family friendly movies and tv shows, etc.) that we are doing so horribly wrong today.I wouldnt change parts of the film where David and Jennifer introduce and teach the residents of Pleasantville how to do things differently in their day to day lives (except for the sex parts which this movie wouldn't have suffered without) thereby introducing color to the town, but at the same time, I would have done it without having to attack a person's beliefs.
This is a movie that might have been made in the 60's, when young trendies embracing "free thinking" (to justify their self-indulgence in sex and drugs) would have hailed this film as the perfect message - even instrument - of change.
They also left us with rampant egotism, mistrust (even hatred) of authority, and a party's-over cynicism that, 30 years later, has only gotten worse.The key problem with "Pleasantville" is that, despite a rushed (and insincere) "reality check" at the very end of the film, writer/director Gary Ross wants us to believe that changing the world is as simple as opening up your mind to sex, jazz and art.
It's hard to really see this as a metaphor for greater things; "Pleasantville" is much too simplistic in its "power to the people" faux-idealism to mean much more than what it shows on the surface.It's also very significant to note that, by film's end, the town of Pleasantville is completely technicolored and every citizen is just as happy and docile on the surface as they appeared in their black and white beginning.
Pleasantville will change you, I am not joking!The movie makes an entrance at poking fun of those old sitcoms as spoofs like "Leave it to beaver" "Father Knows Best" The Andy Griffith, "Dick Van Dyke" but ends up becoming one perfect political satire statement.This is a follow up of the book "Fahrenheit 451" as well as "The Truman Show" but with a different twist.
In the fight over the remote, both teens are inexplicably sucked into the TV set and thus into the black-and-white world of Pleasantville, where everything is perfect...or is it?The hallmark of this film is that it deals with some pretty heavy social issues without getting preachy or self-indulgent.
It's an American fantasy movie released in 1998 that tells the story of two teenagers living in the nineties who accidentally enter a fifties black-and- white sitcom which takes place in a town called Pleasantville.