"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.""