Pleasantville Poster

Pleasantville (1998)

Comedy | Fantasy 
Rayting:   7.5/10 122K votes
Country: USA
Language: English
Release date: 29 July 1999

Two 1990s teenage siblings find themselves in a 1950s sitcom, where their influence begins to profoundly change that complacent world.

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User Reviews

fred3f 15 October 2007

I may have expected too much from this movie and that is why I gave it a low score. Being generous, I have to say that I thought it was pleasant, enjoyable and entertaining. What bothered me is that it was also trying to be profound and instead it was just a cliché of all the false ideas that people have of the 50's.

If you were born in the 70's or later or even as early as 65, you probably think the 50's is like what you see in old Ozzy and Harriet shows. It was far from that. WWII had ended in 1945. It was a blood bath. Many people lost their lives. Women and children were left bereft of their husbands, fathers and lovers. The people that came back had a hard time adjusting to civilian life - they were not the same people who left. Crime broke out and marriages broke up, for illicit sex was rampant. It wasn't just that people were horny, they had too much evil going on in their heads that they needed some way to escape it. With Hitler, every American learned the meaning of genocide. With Stalin, our former ally, becoming a greater butcher than Hitler, people wondered if anything had really changed. The terror of the atomic bomb was strong, and the treat of Communist aggression was real and had people building shelters under the ground. What people wanted on TV was normalcy. There was enough fear, terror, death and injustice in life itself. We didn't need to see it on TV. So TV gave us a fantasy world where there were good people who had good "clean" fun and everything worked out. It actually helped. It gave you something to shoot for, an idea that reality can be better. Pleasentville parodies a life and an America that never existed. It is stereotype that is as bad and, in my humble opinion, as reprehensible as a watermelon eating black man. The idea that there was a black and white world that is suddenly made colorful by sex is simply a heavy-handed and overly simplistic use of symbolism. There was plenty of sex in the 50's. I know, because I was there. It was rampant and good and dirty, with no excuses or apology. People didn't need to see it on TV. Unfortunately, it seems that the modern generation thinks they invented sex, or at least good sex. Trust me they didn't, any more than it was invented in the 50's. I wonder how they think that they got here?

There is something comforting in thinking an earlier age was so wrong and we are so right. Dream on. This movie is so popular, so my review will probably be hated. I'm not sure why I wrote it, even. Maybe because not everyone likes heavy-handed, stereotypical productions that pretend to be saying something. They should be warned. The movie tries to parody a overly simplistic world that never existed in an overly simplistic way. In doing so, it is its own self-parody.

Putzberger 21 August 2010

Fmovies: "Pleasantville" as about a pair of modern teenagers who are transported into a black-and-white 50s TV show. That scenario has disaster potential of FEMA proportions, so when the filmmakers avoided making a post-modern film version of "Gilligan's Island" starring Will Ferrell is half the battle. 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. The casting is half-right. Don Knotts as the mysterious TV repairman who transforms people into sitcom characters? Perfect. Tobey Maguire as the nerdy, unpopular teen obsessed with an old family sitcom? Way too easy. Looking at Tobey Maguire back in 1998, you assumed he was a geek, so he coasts on his charisma deficit and doesn't bother creating much of a character. Reese Witherspoon as the slutty girl who introduces sexual liberation into the staid 1950s? Brilliant. This was before anyone knew how good she was, and her depth and intelligence shine through this gimmicky role -- her sense of mischief in her early sitcom scene is hilarious, her transformation into a more thoughtful young woman is quite moving. Jeff Daniels as the soda jerk with artistic aspirations? Confused. Is his character stupid or repressed? Daniels never figures it out so he plays it both ways and winds up just kind of stiff and awkward. Finally, the politics of "Pleasantville" are halfway thought-provoking. A few scenes of book burning and threatened gang rape are enough to make you wonder if "Pleasantville" is about the sentimental impulse at the heart of fascism. But that's kind of intense for an American movie so it almost literally backs away from that idea in a bizarre edit and becomes a sentimental movie about self-acceptance and self-actualization. Which is fine, just not incredibly distinctive. Good but not great.

Moe-9 3 November 1998

Pleasantville has a promising enough beginning. As a matter of fact the first hour is pretty good-what with its technical wizardry and light campy comedy. Unfortunately, it ends up trying to make many statements about our culture. It becomes overly judgemental and shows the characters of American situation comedies as hidden fascists. There was nothing deep about these characters, and that's the way they're meant to be remembered - as giving us moments of light entertainment. We end up getting lectures by an eighteen year old who knows more than everyone in the town put together. What he doesn't get is that that was all there was. If you try to analyze a joke too much, you lose its meaning.

pwykes 9 May 1999

Pleasantville fmovies. I had heard what a great movie this was supposed to be but I was really disappointed. Sure, the colorizing effects were neat but that's about it. The story is a sort of moralistic tale about how everything was not as good as it seemed in the fifties,etc... As if anyone really believed that anyway. The movie is full of all kinds of preachiness that is too obvious and heavy handed. Sure, a world such as depicted in Pleasantville would have problems but I know of no-one who thinks of that world as an ideal. This movie got real old and boring real fast.

Isaac5855 23 October 2006

PLEASANTVILLE had to be one of the biggest surprises I've ever had at the movies. 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. Yes, it may borrow from other movies, but there is a freshness and originality to this movie that is most engaging and anytime with Don Knotts is time well spent.

gagliano 13 February 2000

First of all....I really liked it. Ignore any review (and reviewer) that says different. We live in a day and age that we seems like every movie has a touch of this old film and bit of that one...or is a remake or possibly a re-release. But Pleasantville is none of that...it is unique, fresh, reflective, pleasant (you knew I was going to use that word someplace), sad, but yet still had a touch of fun. The film begins by looking at the interaction between and the lives of a brother (Tobey Maguire) and sister (Reese Witherspoon). The brother is very content with his life and enjoys watching television, in particular, the show, Pleasantville. His sister, a bit more outgoing, enjoys meeting new people and seeing where this interaction will lead. A fight over which show to watch results in the intervention by Don Knotts (of Andy Griffith and Three's Company fame). Maguire and Witherspoon are wisked into the television set and take center stage as two of the Pleasantville cast. The only difference is while the world may be watching a tv show, to them, this is their reality. 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. As those in color become more prevalent, the old black & whites become resistant to change. To ebb the flow of change, the black and whites react violently against the "new colors" and begin placing restrictions on them. Yes the similarities of the 60s civil rights movement are here as are the violent acts of the Nazis in pre-World War II. But while you see these, you are also brought to the realization that there still exists a great deal of prejudice, discrimination, and close-mindedness in this world. One of the most pleasing aspects of this film is the cinematography, the mixing of the colors with the black & white shots were great. The story keeps your interest and the characters impact upon each member of the audience in their own special way. This is one film to see for I think you will hear more about it around Oscar time. Bottom line...if we open our minds more towards others, letting them be who they are, rather than who we want them to be, then not only will we be richer in color, but also richer in character.

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