In the ensuing fracas, the television remote control is destroyed, but a
convenient, passing TV repairman gives them a replacement and, "Kapow",
both find themselves in Pleasantville living the lives of Bud and Mary Sue
in the black and white sitcom world.The perfect, "Honey, I'm home", world is soon shattered as the predictability
and monotony of the town is slowly destroyed by questions, which would never
have been asked, and the revealing of knowledge, previously unknown.
As Pleasantville is slowly affected, the townsfolk begin to see things in a
different light, experience new emotions and, quite literally, colour is
brought to their lives and town.
But that's nothing more than the five minute thirty second trailer showed !
I must admit that I was quite apprehensive about seeing the film, having seen
the trailer, I couldn't see what more there could be to this film and I was
starting to suspect it would be little more than sentimental slush.
The trailer does indeed blow the whole plot away and whether you need to see
the whole film, if you've seen the trailer, is debatable.
It's a great little film, excellently directed and the colourisation effects
work extremely well ( definitely in line for the Academy Award for Artistic
Direction and it should have been in the nominations for Best Visual Effects )
but was there more to this epic than the trailer had already disclosed ?
Well yes and no. The padding filled out the film nicely with some quite
hilarious scenes and lines but it added very little of substance. The effects
of people becoming coloured on those who weren't, and their consequential
reactions, were more dramatically portrayed but I found the whole racist
parallelism a little overdone; the, "No coloreds", references I found to be
entirely patronising given that only the most comatose audience member could
have failed to see the situation developing on screen without prompting.
The point of the film escaped me; it was all very pleasant, entertaining and
certainly a lot better than I had given it credit for before viewing. Apart
from the racial harmony issue though, that Pleasantville had burst
into living colour; so what ?
It would be very pretentious to assume that the townsfolk were any happier in
their brightly coloured world than they were before. As a comment upon
unwanton interference in a happy society the film can be seen as a warning but
that would seem to be against the spirit of the film and the views of other
critics who proclaim it to be this year's feel good movie. Where the
feel good element comes from I'm not sure.
Why the mysterious TV repairman turned up and what his purpose was, other than
as a pretty weak plot device, was never really explained.
And the film ended before the, "What have you done with my daughter ?", line
was uttered.
Pleasant and entertaining, thought provoking ? Not really. Scrutinise the film
too deeply and it soon loses most of its magic.
It's still well worth seeing, there are a lot worse films to be found, and the
rendition of Across The Universe during the closing credits is worth
hanging on for.
