Pleasantville

"Look, you can't always like what you do. Sometimes you just do it because it's your job. And even if you don't like it, you just gotta do it anyway."

"People, people.... I think we all know what's going on here. Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. It seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant."

"Where am I going to see colors like that? Must be awfully lucky to see colors like that. I bet they don't even know how lucky they are."

"At last My love has come along My lonely days are over And life is like a song."

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe. Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my open mind, Possessing and caressing me. Jai Guru Deva Om. Nothing's gonna change my world."

"Nothing is as simple as Black and White."

"Pleasantville — It's Just Around the Corner."

"Reliable TV Repair · We'll fix you for good."

"Pleasantville is a morality tale concerning the values of contemporary suburban America by holding that social landscape up against both the Utopian and the dystopian visions of suburbia that emerged in the 1950s."

"Every now and then, a movie comes along that does the motion picture industry proud. … What seems at first to be a gently satiric nostalgia piece gradually turns serious when the twins introduce spontaneity and a dose of 90′s reality to Pleasantville’s pre-programmed denizens. This reality virus, manifesting as color, gradually spreads through the town. While this awakening adds color, knowledge and diversity to their previously rote existence, the unprepared citizens must also come to grips with such decidedly unpleasant scourges as intolerance, violence and racism. When that once-charming black and white 1950′s Main Street view transforms into B&W newsreel-like footage of a book burning, hatred-spewing mob chanting “No Coloreds,” the film certainly tempers our nostalgia – and cleverly fires its warning shots right across our bow. Sure times are tough in the 90′s, but it ain’t all bad and the “good old days” weren’t always all that good. This is an exquisite, timely film. It’s nice to know that occasionally, even Hollywood does something right."

"The wonder or this film, its grand feat, is to recast the nostalgic and imperturbably pleasant black-and-white landscape of Pleasantville as in need of a strong dose of our violent, endangered, live-and-in-color, three-dimensional world. The film identifies as repressive (and ultimately dangerous) the "false front" of Pleasantville as it contrasts with the emotional untidiness of "real life." By the end, instead of continuing to hope his actual family becomes like the one on Pleasantville, the brother models the no longer idealized Pleasantville on "real life.""

"Pleasantville is one of the year's delights. It flies off the screen with a freshness and wonder that tickle you with the though that film itself is reborn, not just the characters in Gary Ross's allegorical fairy tale. The device Ross uses as springboard on behalf of passion and intensity — and the antinostalgic belief that you can't go back, only forward, is simply brilliant and brilliantly simple."

"Though writer/director Gary Ross works in some heavy-handed strokes, his portrait of stodgy Eisenhower America dazzles with some of the loveliest imagery of any 1990s film."

"In the twilight of the 20th century, here is a comedy to reassure us that there is hope — that the world we see around us represents progress, not decay. Pleasantville, which is one of the year's best and most original films, sneaks up on us. It begins by kidding those old black-and-white sitcoms like Father Knows Best, it continues by pretending to be a sitcom itself, and it ends as a social commentary of surprising power."

"The film observes that sometimes pleasant people are pleasant simply because they have never, ever been challenged. That it's scary and dangerous to learn new ways. The movie is like the defeat of the body snatchers: The people in color are like former pod people now freed to move on into the future. We observe that nothing creates fascists like the threat of freedom. Pleasantville is the kind of parable that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent. Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom. I grew up in the '50s. It was a lot more like the world of Pleasantville than you might imagine. Yes, my house had a picket fence, and dinner was always on the table at a quarter to six, but things were wrong that I didn't even know the words for."

"Ambitious, ingenious and visually breathtaking, Pleasantville is a rarity in contemporary filmmaking; a fully-realized vision that succeeds on multiple levels. Writer and director Gary Ross has crafted a wondrous experience that satisfies as a comedy, a fantasy, a drama and a parable. Movies don't get much better than this."

"Hollywood satire is not usually this enjoyable: Both savage and silly, Pleasantville is an absolute blast."

"It never rains, the highs and lows rest at 72 degrees, the fire department exists only to rescue treed cats, and the basketball team never misses the hoop. … Pleasantville is a false hope. David's journey tells him only that there is no "right" life, no model for how things are "supposed to be.""

"Parents need to know that Pleasantville raises many ideas about modern troubled times versus old-time simplicity, as well as freedom, responsibility and tolerance. The movie contains many sexual situations, as the naïve TV characters learn about sex for the first time, but the movie handles them gracefully. … High schoolers may appreciate the way that the twins, at first retreating in different ways from the problems of the modern world, find that the rewards of the examined life make it ultimately worthwhile. Parents and teens alike will find many things to think and talk about after watching Pleasantville, including the movie's parallels to (book burning) and American Jim Crow laws ("No colored" signs), and the challenges of independent thinking. Also intriguing is the path of Jennifer's character. At first, she thinks that it is sex that turns the black and white characters into color. But when she stays "pasty," she realizes that the colors reveal something more subtle and meaningful — the willingness to challenge the accepted and opening oneself up to honest reflection about one's own feelings and longings."

"This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression...That when we're afraid of certain things in ourselves or we're afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop."

"Tobey Maguire - David/Bud"

"Reese Witherspoon - Jennifer/Mary Sue"

"William H. Macy - George Parker"

"Joan Allen - Betty Parker"

"Jeff Daniels - Bill Johnson"

"J. T. Walsh - Big Bob"

"Don Knotts - TV Repairman"

"Marley Shelton - Margaret"

"Paul Walker - Skip Martin"

"Jane Kaczmarek - David's Mom"

"Erik MacArthur - Will"

"Dawn Cody - Betty Jean"

"Maggie Lawson - Lisa Anne"

"Andrea Baker - Peggy Jane"

"Lela Ivey - Miss Peters"

"Jim Patric - Tommy"

"Marc Blucas - Basketball Hero"