Review of Pleasantville (1998) by Patrick G — 20 Apr 2009

Nothing is ever black and white. Even when it is black and white, you still see myriad shades of grey.

Teenage loner David (Tobey Maguire) is not getting anywhere with his life, unlike his rambunctious sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) who seems to be Ms. Popular. David retreats from his life via a 1950s black-and-white TV sitcom called 'Pleasantville', where everything is solved in less than a half hour and everyone is naive, but happy.

A strange remote control left by an even stranger TV repairman (TV icon Don Knotts) transports David and Jennifer into the world of Pleasantville, where David becomes 'Bud Parker' and Jennifer becomes 'Mary-Sue Parker', complete with loving parents 'George' and 'Betty' (William H. Macy and Joan Allen).

David soon finds life in Pleasantville is not what he thought. The basketball team has never lost a game (or missed a free throw), bowlers can always get the spare on a 7-10 split, it never rains and the fire department has never responded to a fire (only when David yells 'cat' do the firemen move into action on a burning tree).

Despite this, 'Bud' seems to have finally found his niche in this world...until 'Mary-Sue' starts flirting with the boys of Pleasantville High and Bud fills in the books at the local library, which until then were all blank. Bud also befriends his boss at the local ice cream parlor, Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels) and introduces him to the world of art, while Mary-Sue puts some ideas into Betty's head about being more than someone who has dinner ready at 6.

David also discovers that when something new is added to the black-and-white hum-drum scripted life, something unexpected happens...what was monochrome changes to Technicolor. It starts with the flowers and then moves to people as each one comes to a profound realization about themselves.

The actions of Bud and Mary-Sue are not only having an effect on the town, but also the 'parents' and each other. Betty becomes disenchanted with George and finds solace in the art world of Bill. Mary-Sue discovers the library books are more than for carrying and Bud finds he's a lot stronger inside than he knew.

Not all realizations are good ones. When local beauty Margaret Henderson (Marley Shelton) gives her famous cookies to Bud, instead of Whitey (David Tom) as called for in 'the script'. Whitey takes on a more sinister tint (no pun intended) and openly acts with his friends against the newly-named 'colored people'.

Yeah...subtle.

All this has not escaped the attention of our repairman, who appears on TV sets to entice Bud to return to reality before some irreperable harm is done to the town.

It's not just the experiment with the color tuner that captures your attention in this film. It's the clash of Madison Avenue with Main Street, Marcia and Jan with Rachel and Phoebe, the Andersons with the Sopranos and Dr. Marcus Welby with Dr. Gregory House.