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PLEASANTVILLE Send This Review to a Friend
Although the execution of the idea wears thin after a while, "Pleasantville" is an imaginative entertainment that stands four square against narrow- minded demands for conformity. It's an entertaining message that takes on importance in this era increasingly marked by intolerance. The basic situation is clever.
David and Jennifer, a teenage brother and sister (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) are magically transported back in time through their television set into a typically bland 1950s sitcom situated in the town of Pleasantville, where everything is perpetually rosy, from an apple-pie mom and dad to an environment in which conformity is the way of life. However, the transported teenagers, suddenly Bud and Mary Sue, the key kids in the sitcom, begin bringing their more sophisticated knowledge to Pleasantville.
Sex? That never was acknowledged as existing in 1950s sitcoms, even for moms and dads like Betty (Joan Allen) and Geogre (William H. Macy). New experiences? It was always the same old routine for characters like the ice cream parlor proprietor played engagingly by Jeff Daniels. Trouble starts when the interlopers begin teaching the guys and girls at school that there can be more action in lover's lane than merely kissing in the back seat of a car. Everything mushrooms, including the witty bringing of color into the black-and-white sitcom environment, and soon the town as been turned topsy-turvy, with the newly-liberated behavior of the inhabitants angering the bluenoses.
It's tough to sustain an idea like this, but writer-director Gary Ross does moderately well and despite all its straining to keep up the satirical fun, "Pleasantville" is far better than the insipid, over-praised "The Truman Show."A New Line Cinema release.
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