Time Travel Movie Fest: Pleasantville

1998 comedic drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Spiderman and that whore from Wild are sucked into their television like in Stay Tuned and find themselves in a quaint sitcom called Pleasantville which takes place in a quaint little town called Pleasantville. Their modern ways begin to corrupt the Pleasantvillians and their black and white world which, thanks to them, begins to take on a little color.

I wonder why Gary Ross hasn't directed more movies. It's hard to believe that a project as ambitious as this--with its cute little color/B&W hook--is the guy's first film. Five years later, he did Seabiscuit, also featuring Tobey Maguire. That's another movie I really liked, at least a lot more than I thought I would. And then he's the guy who helms the first Hunger Games movie, a movie that a lot of people seemed to like. It just seems odd that he hasn't done more. Is there something I don't know about the guy?

We could debate whether or not this is a time travel movie or not, but I don't really want to and would rather you not bring it up. One has to assume that the world of Pleasantville is in the past. Tobey and Reese aren't transported just to another place, right? Pleasantville seems fueled by nostalgia, the good ol' days that old farts always talk about built in its bricks. It also feels like this calm before the storm. You don't see them, but you almost feel clouds looming, mostly because we live in Tobey and Reese's present and know all about what happened in the 60's with its free thinkers and conflicts and hippie music and drugs and counterculture heroes. Early, we're slammed with the times-they-have-a-changed lessons ("Ok, who can tell us what a famine is?") and a scene that bounces between Maguire, with that longing smile and nostalgia for things he never even personally experienced, watching the television show with its idealistic family values and his single mom's argument with his dad about visitation seems to be making a point about how we've lost a little something as a society. Or maybe we've lost a bunch of little somethings.

The messages are a little all over the place in this. There's almost too much going on thematically, so much that it's really hard to pin down exactly what this is trying to say. There's all kinds of stuff about family values. There's conformity, stifled free thought and creativity, and the importance and magic of art. They toy with the traditional roles of men and women. There are conspicuous allusions to racial segregation ("No coloreds" signs? Come on.) and Civil Rights although there doesn't appear to be a single black person in Pleasantville. Censorship is thrown into the mix. There's lots of sex. There are hints of a Utopian society, the idea that when things appear perfect, folks' complacency can often be damning. There are probably things that I'm forgetting about or didn't even catch. It's a lot to take in, and it kind of makes the movie feel bloated. I guess it all can be boiled down to the idea that blind conformity and the automatic acceptance of roles thrown upon us can be dangerous. Or can they? It's not like any of the Pleasantville characters would have even known they were unhappy without Reese Witherspoon popping in to say "cool" and give Paul Walker an erection. Be-bop-a-lula!

So here's a question: Which is more dangerous--premarital sex or books and art?

This is an entertaining movie even if it's kind of a mess. The color/B&W thing is the kind of experiment that's been played around with before but never to this extent. It just works, and it creates some beautiful and poignant imagery. It's a gimmick, but it never gets in the way of the storytelling and, more often than not, at least forces your eyes to scan each inch of the screen to watch for changes. Randy Newman, with an unmistakably Randy Newmanish score, provides music that perfectly compliments the visuals. Sure it's Esquivel--a personal favorite--who gets us started in the opening scene, but it's Newman whose music drives this thing. One point when the score is perfect is during a courtroom scene, a jazzy interlude between when Tobey's asked "What's beyond Pleasantville?" and provides an answer.

And then there's Don freakin' Knotts, vintage as the TV repairman. It's really not until Knotts makes his first appearance that this turns into something special. He's just so good, and hearing his say "umph" is almost magical. And there's something about hearing Don Knotts cursing that can just put hair on your balls. Jeff Daniels' character ("There are no cheeseburgers.") is a lot of fun, it's cool seeing Paul Walker in a role like this, and William H. Macy and Joan Allen play the Cleaver-esque parents so well, but it's Don Knotts who steals the show.

Favorite scene: Following the irony of a kid having the sex talk with her parent, we get a sequence juxtaposing a persnickety Macy in bed with shots of Mrs. Cleaver masturbating in the tub and suddenly seeing color and fake birds and exploding trees. It's a great scene, and the Newman music is perfect again there. Be-bop-a-lula!