More than a pleasant movie (Pleasantville (DVD))

Member Name: pbyron

Product:	Pleasantville (DVD)
Date:	22/08/01 (573 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great story , good acting, nice subtle effects

Disadvantages: Not too many extras

Imagine a world where nothing really bad happened. Wouldn’t it be great? But what if nothing really good happened either? Pleasantville is the story of such a place, set in a 1950’s television programme where no one dies, it never rains and the only thing the firemen ever do is rescue cats!

Bud (Toby Mcguire) is a teenage loser, hopeless with girls and very shy, his one fixation is watching re-runs of the Pleasantville show, being aired on his local station. The programme is having a marathon showing, with a competition at the end which Bud wants to win, but before he can make himself comfortable his popular sister, Jennifer (played by Reese Witherspoon) has ordered him upstairs, as her new boyfriend is coming around to watch an MTV concert.

Tempers get heated and they end up fighting over the remote, which falls and shatters on the floor, causing them both to lose hope of watching anything. As if by magic, a TV repairman calls at their house and, after finding out about Bud’s addiction and knowledge of the show, offers them a ‘special’ remote as a replacement. Before they know what has happened, Bud and Jennifer find themselves in the tranquil and dull world of Pleasantville, all in glorious Black and White!

This is where the film really takes off. After trying to get used to the new world of Pleasantville’s mundane town, Jennifer makes a few modern changes to the 1950’s ‘goody goody’ atmosphere and before they know it, colour and excitement breaks out all over town. People are amazed at the results and Jennifer is ecstatic about bringing out these new feelings in everyone, but Bud finds himself having to rescue his sister from destroying their chances of getting back to reality forever. You just know there is going to be trouble, as the older town members find out what is going on and all hell breaks lose.

Pleasantville is a well-scripted and fantastically humorou
s little film, it’s subtle humour and great characters will make you think about what happiness really is. Would you really be better off being stable, living each day with no excitement or passion? The film doesn’t provide all the answers, but it entertains these ideas in such a wonderful way. The acting throughout is fantastic, and all the Pleasantville residents are highly believable, even though their ideals are misguided, you feel sorry for them being disrupted in such a way.

For a film that’s partly in Black and White, Pleasantville has an excellent picture quality, which really shows up as the colour starts to leak into the town. The sound too is clear and crisp, highlighting Randy Newman’s excellent musical score well. The 5.1 surround is rarely used for the effects, subtle as they are, but the music filters softly from the back speakers, giving a great mix.

The limited extras are well thought out as well. A lovely documentary (split into parts so that you can easily find the section you want) shows us how the colour was added in certain sections of the movie to give the wonderful special effects. It also gives an insight into what the director was trying to achieve from the story, highlighting the passion with which the film was made. The music video is a nice addition, the video itself using some nice little effects of it’s own for the cover of a late Beatles number by Fiona Apple. Two trailers and some detailed cast and crew notes round off these extras.

Pleasantville is a wonderfully sentimental movie experience that leaves you pondering life’s ups and downs, a good film to watch when times are hard or the rain is beating down outside.

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