Pleasantville . The Boston Phoenix . 10-26-98

Pleasantville

DIRECTED BY: Gary Ross

REVIEWED: 10-26-98

Don Knotts is God. At least he is to David (Tobey Maguire), a nerdy youth who seeks solace from the dysfunctional '90s in reruns of Pleasantville, a Father Knows Best-like sit-com from the '50s. Knotts's omnipotent TV repairman rewards David for his devotion to the show by zapping him and his cooler sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) into the black-and-white, Edenic world of the series. But the teens find Pleasantville stifling, and when they introduce the residents to the forbidden fruits of sex (as in other '50s sit-coms, married couples sleep in separate beds) and knowledge (books are blank-paged props), they inadvertently change the town for better and worse. Splashes of color appear first in the landscape and later on people's faces whenever they reach a moment of self-actualization, and soon the town is divided between preservers of the status quo and the "colored."

Fabulist screenwriter Gary Ross (Big, Dave), making his directing debut, has created a film that's visually brilliant and gorgeous but whose premise is more inspired than its execution. Its most tantalizing suggestions (that ideas and art can be as life-changing as sex) are left frustratingly undeveloped, and its most subtle point (Ross is satirizing not the '50s but the nostalgic evocation of the '50s that conservatives use to decry the changes in the decades that followed) is buried under gimmickry. Like the town, Pleasantville the movie is a lovely place to visit but one whose surface charms don't bear much scrutiny.

--Gary Susman

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