4/4  Lost in the Garden of Eden?
Director Gary Ross really nails the complexities, hypocrisies and core values of American life in this underrated debut tale of life, love and the trouble with choice.

Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon play teenage siblings who, throu... (read full)

3/4  Pleasantville Quick Review
I rated it a 3. But, it's very close to a 3.5. It's a great movie. The message it sends is an important one. It tells people to just be themselves.

1/4  Pleasantville Quick Review
I really thought it was stupid and dare I say untrue to life. Of course it couldn't happen, but I didn't think the characters were true.

2.5/4  Pleasantville Quick Review
It has the right idea, and some great visual effects, but it gets too overly-sentimental and mushy for my taste. The best parts of the film are black and white, but when the color starts coming in, the sickly sweetness creeps in with it.

2/4  Pleasantville Quick Review
I was expecting more from this black and white and color pic. Oh well, maybe next time they will do it right when they remake it....

5/5 Truly Original
  by A. Simon (USA)
This movie was one of the few films made in recent decades with a truly original plot (another one was The Truman Show). I admit that I went to see it, expecting another leftist political propaganda movie from Hollywood, full of the usual cliches. You can argue either way that it is and it is not, but like Dead Man Walking, it does a superb balancing act. It starts out portraying the grim statistics of the present day and the contemporary characters are nothing if not contemptible (the mother is chasing after a single guy, leaving the kids alone; the sister is a cheap whore). The teenage boy takes refuge in overdosing on a 50s black and white TV show where you have a nuclear family and the horrors of contemporary life are absent, and then he is catapulted there. Once there, however, things are bland, too bland. Once he starts introducing books into the kids's lives and once the slut starts screwing around anything with pants, color begins to come into the picture. Unfortunately, things start to break down and some people suddenly start to act in a decidedly nasty way and the parents break up.
Definitely an original film. It is surprising that Hollywood produced it.

5/5 Pleasantville
  by Charmaine Keller (Kansas City (home of Hallmark))
I managed to accidentally buy 2 instead of 1 of this DVD, but other than that, one needs to understand what McCarthyism thinking did to this country and the dynamics of fear in a society during social change to get this one, but I love it. Video condition is excellent. New. Both of them. lol

5/5 Big Thumbs UP!
  by M. Lion (Bloomington, IN United States)
When I first began to watch this movie I thought it was going to be a real "oh let's go back to the good old days" moralizing yawner of a movie. I was exactly wrong. What a beautiful commentary on how the human spirit must express itself. In short, I love this movie.

5/5 "Where's My Blu-Ray?"
  by Ryle Shermatz (Cedar Rapids, IA)
Seriously, was "Pleasantville" the best movie of the 1990's? I know I'm overlooking a lot of superlative work to say that but I just happened to watch it again last night and got clobbered all over by its wonderous ingenuity and charm. "Pleasantville" is a movie I NEVER get tired of and by golly, now that it's only $5.99 to buy it new you really have no excuse but to give it a shot.

I will forgo a synopsis here because so many other reviewers preceding me have already done so. Let me just observe that if you want to experience full-frontal allegory, you cannot do better than this. There is so much symbolism and social commentary gently packaged in this sweet parable of an Eisenhower era sitcom come to life! I must confess for this 51 year old reviewer the demographic and generational arrows launched by "Pleasantville" score a direct hit on my boomer-era heart. I would hope younger viewers unaware of the '50's TV conventions being employed as background here can still understand the social strictures and conventions referenced, and even if they can't, can still marvel at the incredible comic/dramatic performances AND the spectacular b&w/color photography that is SO important to the storytelling.

The cast--KILLER! Reese Witherspoon, Tobey McGuire, Jeff Daniels, Bill Macy (where's my dinner!), J.T. Walsh (alas! His last role--RIP)--all sublime REALLY in every respect. But I gotta RAVE at you about just how POWERFUL and INTENSE Joan Allen's performance as an archetypal sitcom mom awakening slowly, and painfully, to a fully 3-D technicolor life, turns out to be (the same journey the entire town takes, albeit grudgingly). I believe this was my first exposure to Joan and her tortured but determined journey depicted here still gives me shivers. I can't imagine any other actress giving such a finely calibrated and sympathetic portrayal. This performance--really ALL of "Pleasantville"--are prime examples of just how GOOD "comedy" acting can be. So much more than just slapstick here!

I can't overlook Don Knotts--who better to provide 1950's "cred" than Barney Fife himself? If you can find it, check out the criminally forgotten Knotts movie The Love God? for Don at his most comically surreal; Yeah, maximum "guilty pleasure" for your reviewer, but I love the outrageous '70's Dacron Polyester Mens' fashion parade and especially the hysterical courtroom faceoff; Don goes on trial as a porn merchant, and gets denounced in open court as a "capering libertine, a lecherous goat, partaking in depraved orgies"--Truly comedy from beyond space and time as we know it!

For those of us who remember the 1950's, "Pleasantville" is ESSENTIAL viewing that will pluck every emotional string you still have. No doubt there are stone hearts who can watch and not be moved, but I'm certainly not one of them. So many memorable & quotable lines of dialogue too: "I don't WANT it to go away!!!" "Those are Whitey's cookies!" "Where's My Dinner!" "You're safe for now, you're in a bowling alley!" "I'm wearing three pounds of underwear here!" "You can pin me anytime!" And I could go on--share your own favorites later.

Also highly recommended, and on a similar wavelength: Matinee [Import] starring John Goodman as an early '60's schlock horror movie producer flogging his new monster epic as the all-too-real terror of the Cuban Missle Crisis unfolds. Then, if you're ready to graduate to the "hard stuff", steel yourself for the almost psychedelic melodramatic swoons of the incredible director Douglas Sirk in All That Heaven Allows Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Douglas Sirk (NTSC All Region Import), or if you're really feeling daring, WRITTEN on the WIND (NTSC All Region Import) Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone, Douglas Sirk.

Let me close as I began: "Pleasantville" is a landmark modern masterpiece and let me declare here publicly, given its unprecedented and amazingly deft use of color in the plot (as you'll see) is especially deserving of the best picture (and sound--OUTSTANDING Randy Newman orchestral score) possible. So--I say again--WHERE'S MY BLU-RAY?!?

5/5 A Wonderful Film
  by Neo
This is one of my all time favorite films. I think anyone that enjoys Art will find something to appreciate in watching this. This is one of my favorite DVD's -- now bring on the Blu-ray release! This film deserves it.