What Did You Think of "Pleasantville?"
 

I just finished watching it, and am curious to see what others thought of it? Thanks.

I liked it.

One of my favorite movies. I really liked the mix of social commentary and character interaction.

Awesome and underrated. It's a movie that's worth watching again from time to time, and hopefully you bought the DVD because the features are also worth going back to from time to time as well.

Decent movie, okay acting and execution. The biggest kick I got out of watching it was learning that Mr. Furley is alive and well.

If Spielberg had done this it would've been a classic.

A little too heavy-handed, but overall, enjoyable.

I don't think I'll ever watch it again, though.

It was swell.

I analyzed the film for a class, but it mostly had to do with the social dynamics of suburbia in a then/now way.

A neat movie. Really underrated.

It was pleasant. :D

I really liked it. The social commentary was very obvious but I didn't think it just beat you over the head with it. Gotta love William H. Macy.

It's alright, but the film's biggest problem is that while suburban life was depicted that way on television (Leave it to Beaver, etc.) that's not what suburban life was really like in America in the 1950s. Therefore it becomes dubious to base any theory around the film being an acurate deconstruction of '50s conformity and '60s counterculture.

Just out of curioisty...what was the significange of showing Jeff Daniels on the bench in the final shot (seated in the same spot William H. Macy was)?

Also, did anyone else think the "No coloreds allowed" sign or the "colored" people sitting on top in the court house was too heavy handed? I liked the original joke--it took me by surprise--but at some point I actually thought they were poking fun at the civil rights movement or just the state of non-whites at the time. I'm not saying that was their intent at all, but it seemed to trivialize it.

The courtroom scene was reminiscent of <b>To Kill a Mockingbird</b>, so the commentary about "colored" people worked on that level as well. Part of the movie's theme is how society was and is uneasy about change. People don't want to have the way of life as they know it altered. But it also captured the 1950s mentality, albeit in an exaggerated mannner, on how life was supposed to be, that everything was perfect, that it was a decade of prosperity and consumerism.

If you read Thomas Hines' <u>Populuxe</u>, you may get a better idea of some of the film's points.

I liked it.

I thought they made it clear that Tobey and Renee went into a TV Show, not the actual 50's. So, the film became a commentary on nostalghia for a world that never existed, but to a lot of people that's all they base their view of the 50's on.

I thought the ending was saying that now Joan Allen has a real choice, and not one dictated by the writer/director of even the film.

I realize that.

When one tries to expand the television satire of Pleasentville into a broader context as social satire of the period it doesn't have a leg to stand on.

The film can be read as a very sharp satire of 1950s television homogonization. It's when one tries to expand that idea into a theory that the film can be read as a commentary on American society in the 1950s that the idea falls apart. It just wasn't like that. Most Americans laughed dismissively at the those shows back when they were new, just as we do now when we look back at them.

I think you are missing the point. The film was not commenting on the way it really was back then or even about those TV shows.

The film was taking to task the attitude that exists today, or did around the time the film was made, that things were much better in the 1950's. That things were safer and happier. This kind of view has really been pushed by some politicians and others that always talk about the past with nostalgia as if everything was perfect back then.

The film is taking those views to task and saying "yeah it was nice, for white males. It was not so nice if you were not white or were a woman." It's simply saying that things were not perfect back then and things are not perfect today. But at least we have color today. :)

Just take a look at the Tobey Mcguire character. He idolized the show not because he thought it depeicted reality, but because he was disenchanted with the state of the world and his life in the present. He idolized the past, thinking it was better back then.

I liked this movie a lot the first time I watched it, but didn't care much for it the second time

very Pleasant

I didn't like this movie. In fact, about halfway through I turned on the commentary to see WTF the director was thinking.

My biggest complaint, <b>and please don't bother trying to explain to me why I'm wrong. I've been on dvdtalk since 1999 and WE'VE ALREADY had many angry PLEASENTVILLE threads back when the movie and dvd came out</b>....anyway the movie starts out with a long bit on how Screwed up modern society is, then it makes Pleasentville some place that's somehow wrong because it's not as screwed up as today. It was "screwed up", and I use that term loosely, but in it's own way just like any other time period. Belive me, being a black man I don't Pine away for the "Good ole 1950's". What my race was going through and what others where going through in the 50's were worlds apart.

...either way the characters then go into PV and proceed to "pervert" it. Thus making it "as screwed up as today".

I'm not really askin' but... what was the point then?

It was the cats pajamas

I loved the film.

i loved it

Fiona Apple's video of her Beatles cover "Across the Universe" was ver well done as well

I thought it was a very good film, especially in the visuals. My only complaint is that 1950's Television was too easy of a target. Been there, done that.

Movie was just ok in my opinion, and Fiona should leave it to John Lennon with that song. Sounded like her mouth was full of marbles...

ahh, yes.........i liked the beatles version better, but the video made the song much better