Review of Pleasantville (1998) by Derek B — 05 May 2016

Pleasantville gives off a comforting, nice element that soon turns a little more into a social message as it goes on - this is great in a sense, but the mood of the film is drastically differing between prejudice storylines and replicating 1950s culture, sticking to the original plot.

Two bickering siblings, David and Jennifer, are given a high tech remote that sucks them into the world of David's favorite 1950s sitcom Pleasantville. Unable to escape for weeks on end, they tamper with some of the classic episodes and make the dreary black and white repetitive nature of Pleasantville more uplifting and colorful, literally. As technicolor slowly begins to spread into the once all black and white town, prejudice arises amongst a corrupt local government and David and Jennifer strive to fix Pleasantville's problems before returning home.

Pleasantville's plot always seemed interesting to me before I watched it and heard about it, and it really is interesting. Comparative to that of fellow late 90s fun on 50s culture film Blast from the Past, its original storyline of getting back home and not tampering too much with original episode storylines is overriden by the uprising of technicolor in Pleasantville, a clearly personal but still very inventive social statement. The charming nature of Pleasantville is soon reminded that even in this seemingly perfect realm, trouble and gloom still resides - which is great, but affects the film's atmosphere in its final hour. Pleasantville isn't possible without a great story, and it mainly delivered on that achievement - there were a lot of missed opportunities floating around for more entertaining plot turns. The performances are good, nothing to run home about but they're fine. Some characters are very likable - specifically, I found Jeff Daniels' character to be great - and others achieve at being loathsome. Pleasantville is good and gives a lot of inventive, groundbreaking and clever ideas for a story, but it tends to flipflop on that same element.