journal features

movie review - Pleasantville

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 1999.04.08

This is a thinly veiled piece about segregated, racist America in the '50s. The setting is a black-and-white '50s sitcom a la Leave It Beaver et al. Two mid-90s teens are zapped by a dubious TV repairman's gizmo into the show. The addition of the teens proves too much for the little colorless world, and everything starts to change. First, colour appears when the kids start having sex and using words like 'cool'. Then, it turns out there's an outside world beyond the simple handful of streets that have always made up Pleasantville.

The whole thing is unfortunately 'Hollywood' in that you just know that everything is going to be conquered by love or the equivalent there-of. When the movie is actually revealing something (such as the 50s/60s-style mob scene where the 'coloreds' store is smashed and books are burned), it just seems a little lackluster. The flip side of the Hollywood effect shows in the main love story, between the mother (Allen) and the budding artist (Daniels) - there's nothing more to it than some shared, blank stares.

The metamorphosis of the characters in the '50s construct is pretty engaging, but being asked to believe that an 18-year-old - whose only apparent talents lie in television trivia - has something to teach not only the TV characters but his parent about life is a little thin.

This is an entertaining flick, but it's more disappointing than meaningful. This only matters because it is so clearly trying to strive for the latter.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.