I've been anticipating this film for a looooooooonnnnnggggg time, ever since SHOWEST, which had a tremendous reel there. We've been getting nothing but positive reviews of the film, and I'm really happy that I get to see this flick on Thursday as part of THE AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL. Also I should be having a report from the panel I'll be doing with Gary Ross and Stuart Gordon, so expect more on this one soon!!!
"Pleasantville"
Advanced Screening Review
by Max Evry
I recently attended a preview screening of the film "Pleasentville" in the Washington D.C. area. "Pleasentville", the whimsical debut feature from veteran screenwriter Gary Ross ("Big", "Dave"), is an effects laden satire that has a great big heart, albeit a profusly bleeding one. The premise is fairly high concept: two 90s teens (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) get mystically transported to, as well as become characters in, the world of a popular 1958 television show that is an amalgam of "Donna Reed", "Ozzie and Harriet", and "Father Knows Best". Once there, they proceed to affect radical changes into the black and white, sacherine sweet innocence of the town's inhabitants and literally put a little color into their lives. This rings resoundingly familiar to the tune of "Back to the Future" meets "The Truman Show", and although there are plenty of similarities to be had, this particular take is far less concerned with exploring it's premise than in serving as a full-frontal assault on the conservative family values rhetoric and their attacks on cultural freedom. The film also explores some of the highly important social movements of the 20th century, including facism (particularly the Nazi Krystalnaucht and book burning rallys), cival rights, and the sexual revolution. There's even one major section that directly recalls the courtroom scenes of "To Kill A Mockingbird".
Often times, especially in the latter half, the film gets bogged down in suffocating heavy handedness and seems to lose it's humorous momentum. Even with it's slew of weaknesses, it is intrigueing to see the radical ideology of the baby-boomer generation both juxtaposed and assimilated with the type of programming they grew up watching. Many members of the audience seemed evenly split between those who really enjoyed it and those who felt it was way too pretentious and "Hollywood" for their tastes. A good deal of loose ends are left dangling at the end as well, but it would be unnesassary to explain them with a premise this far fetched. It would be impossible to not mention the truly breathtaking achievements of the effects crew, whose contrasting color and gray images are a stunning triumph of production design. One could easily turn off the soundtrack completly and still comprehend the film with great clarity. However, they would be missing out on a lot of the many hilarious passages between characters, including insanely cheerful parents William H. Macy and Joan Allen, helpless malt shop manager Jeff Daniels (experiencing the other side of "The Purple Rose Of Cairo"), and the mind boggling perkiness of the high school girls (who all have names like Betty Sue, Mary Lue, etc).
All the actors put in appealing performances, including "The Ice Storm''s Maguire, delivering a nuanced, Michael J. Fox-esque performance as the "Pleasantville" fanatic highly protective of the fictional world, and the late J.T. Walsh ("A Few Good Men", "Breakdown"), whose final screen role as Pleasantville's mayor provides him with one of the most playful antagonistic roles of his colorful career. Also delightful is Don Knotts, essentially filling the role of "Big"'s Zoltar machine, as the amazingly punctual TV repair man who plays God with the two siblings via a magical remote control. The only major blotch of the cast is Witherspoon, phenominally nerve-rending as Maguire's promiscuous sister, although many of Ross's lines don't allow her much to work with. Witherspoon's character suffers from the broadness of the script, which is surprisingly the same aspect that holds the film together. Ross does not try to emulate the appearance and content of whitebread 50's programming as much as create a caracature to hang his gags and political ideologies from (just to note, Ross wrote speeches for both Clinton and Dukakis, and his father was a blacklisted writer during the same time that this movie takes place).
Overall, I'd have to say that the film took me by surprise with it's good nature and surprising ingenuity. Both in terms of content and visuals, "Pleasantville" far surpasses the dissapointing "Truman Show" by exorcising all the possibilities of it's concept, and then going beyond the main idea. It is also exceptionally well paced, allowing the audience to be fully immersed into the alternate reality without drawing too much attention to any one aspect of it. Much like the characters in "Dave" and "Big", the teenagers in this film grow fond of their new identities, and revel in their abilities to affect their ideal roles in life. Many moments of true visual splendor permeate throughout this movie, including a gorgeous scene involving two black and white characters driving their car through a storm of blowing pink cherry bolssoms. Ultimately, the movie serves as both an enjoyable nostalgia trip and a diatribe against old fashioned ideals, with a few genuinly funny, "pleasant" surprises along the way.
