Review of Pleasantville (1998) by Criticalycritic — 26 Feb 2015

Pleasantville Movie Review.

Pleasantville is a movie that is parallel to the Bible story of Adam and Eve. In this assignment, I will be explaining the similarities, the differences and my critique on the movie and the original story.

Pleasantville has many similarities when compared to the story of Adam and Eve, but in different ways. They have similar settings because in Pleasantville, everything was simple and without sin, and it’s the same in the Bible story. In Pleasantville, there are animals and there are also animals in the Bible. The characters enter the world by being placed there by God or the TV repair man. Sin is introduced into the world by the characters and it changes everything.

The characters are also similar in their own ways. Bud, or David, is the same as Adam from the Bible because of their characteristics. Bud really doesn’t try to change anything in the world like Adam. They also start off as whole of something or filled with too much of something else. For Bud, he is filled with being a nerd or obsessed with television while Adam is filled with purity or cleanliness. Jennifer, or Mary Sue, is also like Eve from the Bible. She is rebellious and doesn’t follow rules but not in the same way. Jennifer is rebellious because she is full of sin and she teaches Pleasantville how to have sex and teaches the parents of self-pleasure. Eve is also the same way. She introduces sin into the world, but not intentionally, by eating the forbidden fruit. She teaches it to the world by giving it also to her husband, Adam. The TV repair man is also the same as God from the Bible. He acts as a god controlling Pleasantville and he also gets mad at Jennifer and Bud for changing everything and changing themselves, the same as God in the Bible.

These two stories also have their fair amount of differences between each other. Pleasantville is set in the future after the Bible story. The characters in Pleasantville are brother and sister while in the Bible they are married. Jennifer changes the world by introducing sin but she does consciously and she knows what she is doing while Eve is tricked by Satan into eating the forbidden fruit and she doesn't know of what she does. The TV repair man who acted like a god couldn’t really make any changes. He tried to make the Bud and Jennifer come back to the real world but they stayed and he really didn’t have power. But God in the Bible has power and when he doesn’t like their sin, he kicks them out of the Garden of Eden and they can’t fight back or stay. In the movie, there are people other than the main characters and in the Bible, there are no other humans but only animals. In Pleasantville, there are buildings while there aren’t any buildings in the Bible. The themes are also different. Change, sin, and rebellion are looked on as a positive thing in Pleasantville while they are viewed as negative things in the Bible. The message in the Bible is that sin is bad while in the movie, change is good.

I think the director did a good job with his interpretation of the movie because it stuck to the core theme, setting, and characters but he gave it his own twist. It had the same plot of the story but in the movie, everything seems better and happier as opposed to in the Bible as change is viewed as a bad thing. He also went much into detail of the sin and change going on in the world and how everything reacted to it. He included what sins or changes they were doing like sex, reading, color, self-pleasure etc. They are the same as In the Bible but he goes specifically into detail with it.

The two stories have both their similarities and differences but the director of Pleasantville told it in his own unique way. He gives it his own twist by having a good ending and everyone's lives are better and happier. I do think it is a good representation of the original Bible story because it sticks to the core theme, setting and characters but they are changed throughout the story.