Review of Pleasantville (1998) by Thomas S — 03 Feb 2013

Pleasantville succeeds at recreating the classical black-and-white family values sitcom setting, and so fairly instantly it becomes apparent that Gary Ross knows exactly how to capture his vision with flying colours, thanks largely to the convincing costumes, makeup and hairstyling. It succeeds at drawing a fascinating comparison between old-time situation and modern day situations. Pleasantville takes on the fantasy of going into a tv series to live out the events of the characters and deals with it in a strongly realistic fashion which would be very complicated due to the plot. It succeeds thanks to the very well written screenplay, succesfully infusing elements of comedy, drama and fantasy into it's plot.

Theres also a fascinating production design in Pleasantvilloe which takes advantage of mixing colour with black-and-white to raise moral issues in a more fantasy way.

The Comedy in Pleasantville is charming and infused into the story very well.

Pleasantville also has a fun musical score composed by the talented Randy Newman which fits the setting well.

Pleasantville also works thanks to the strong lead actors and many other cast members.

Tobey Maguire captures the mood of an introverted teenage character with confidence and spot-on line delivery, and his character develops strongly as the story moves along.

Reese Witherspoon starts off as the standard american teenage girl, and while she plays it convincingly we find that as her character develops through Pleasantville, so do her skills as an actress. She is a sign of how everything in Pleasantville develops well, in terms of plot and characterization. It's especially notable because in Pleasantville when they enter the black and white prouction design, Witherspoon's beauty is gradually downplayed so that her acting skills can flourish.

Jeff Daniels and Joan Allen also play good parts to the story, adding good dynamics to the drama. William H. Macy was also full of charm as usual.

On the negative side, the issue is the fact that the pacing becomes irregular at times and is fairly speedy to a good extent at first but slows down after it hits some interesting points.

But Pleasantville was a jolly film and if I saw it as a kid I would have enjoyed it it and learned from it very much. And even at my current age I learned a lot watching it, so i'd definetely reccomend watching Pleasantville.