# Pleasantville (1998)

### reviewed by
Kevin Patterson

    Film review by Kevin Patterson

    PLEASANTVILLE
    Rating: ***1/2 (out of four)
    PG-13, 1998
    Director/Screenplay: Gary Ross
    Starring Cast: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen, William H. Macy

Several months after THE TRUMAN SHOW impressed critics and audiences, we now get PLEASANTVILLE, the second of 1998's "protagonist trapped in a television show" films. This one is written and directed by Gary Ross, previously known as the screenwriter of BIG, in which a machine at a carnival transplanted a 12-year-old into the body of an adult, and DAVE, in which a mild-mannered nice guy successfully impersonated the President of the United States for several years. There is some of the same whimsical charm in PLEASANTVILLE, in which squabbling 1990s siblings David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon), find themselves transported into an old "Leave It To Beaver"-style '50s black-and-white sitcom called, you guessed it, "Pleasantville," where they assume the identities of two of the series's main characters.

There's a catch. No one in PLEASANTVILLE knows anything beyond what they need to function as TV characters. David's boss at the soda shop, Mr. Johnson, doesn't know how to keep the shop running if David's not there to set up the counter after he finishes wiping it off; one day David arrives late to find Mr. Johnson standing there in confusion as he explains, "You weren't here, so I just . . . kept wiping." No one actually learns anything in school, since very few scenes actually take place there. The bathrooms don't have any stalls (when was the last time you saw anybody relieving themselves on network TV?). The firemen only know how to rescue cats from trees and are totally perplexed as to what the hoses in the back of the fire engine do.

For a while, it seems as if PLEASANTVILLE might turn into an amusing but immature satire of the "family values" crowd. As David and Jennifer introduce the citizens of Pleasantville to knowledge of the outside world, their black-and-white existence literally starts to give way to color. Ross makes a poor choice, however, by starting this off with Jennifer having sex with her character's boyfriend. This isn't handled particularly well, and it risks making an already bizarre story downright laughable. The movie reaches what has to be its lowest point when a woman's sexual experimentation apparently causes a tree in the back yard to burst into flames; at this stage, I was beginning to wonder if "Gary Ross" was actually a pseudonym for "Woody Allen on speed." (The scene does, at least, lead to perhaps the funniest comic payoff, in which David has to summon the clueless firemen by telling them there's a cat in a tree, grabs the hose from their fire truck, and puts the fire out himself while one of them looks around bewildered and asks, "Where's the cat?")

Fortunately, PLEASANTVILLE finds its feet soon after these initial stumbles. The only other obvious political swipe is a more sophisticated and relevant one, as the citizens who have remained black-and-white try to keep their multichromatic neighbors away with "No Coloreds Allowed" signs in the windows. And for the most part, Ross wisely chooses to downplay the political in the latter half of the film, focusing instead on more basic aspects of human experience. With the arrival of color comes the loss of the town's idyllic existence. It clouds over and rains once in a while instead of being sunny all the time, and the high school basketball team is no longer invincible. The town's leaders think that the solution is punish the "coloreds" and restrict things like painting in color, but in the end, even they aren't impervious to the new knowledge and experience introduced by David and Jennifer and find themselves becoming "colored" as well.

By the end of PLEASANTVILLE, I was, pardon the pun, pleasantly surprised to see what had started off as a bizarre and occasionally sloppy comedy turn into a rousing call to rise above complacency and self-satisfaction, as Ross makes the case that short-term pain and confusion is often worth the long-term benefits of change. It's not quite as polished and coherent as THE TRUMAN SHOW, which dealt with similar themes, but it nevertheless overcomes its lesser moments and still emerges in the end as one of the best films of the year.

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