Force Fed Films: Pleasantville (1998)

This week Puneet gave me the movie Pleasantville to watch. I remember watching a bit of this movie on TV ages ago, but it didn't interest me and I changed the channel. I wasn't really looking forward to the Leave it to Beaver inspired town, but since it's a Force Fed Film, I didn't really have a choice. Starring Toby McGuire before he was ever Spider-Man, and Reese Witherspoon as his sister, the movie shows them getting sucked into the TV where they have to live in black and white until they are set free. There is a bit more to the story than that, but we'll get into that after the jump.


The grey scale world David and Jennifer are forced to live in is more than just a normal town. They get transported Star Trek style into David's favorite TV show, Pleasantville. Everything here is pleasant, and always runs according to schedule. Everything is done in the same way, everyday, and that's the way the townsfolk like it. As David and Jennifer try to cope with the odd world, they end up influencing it unexpectedly. David shows the diner owner that he can do things in a different order, and doesn't have to stick to the routine. Jennifer shows the local high school boys that there's more to love than just holding hands. The more the town starts acting like real life, the more colour appears in the world.

Bringing colour to a colourless world is now an old and tired device due mainly to a lot of video games

While the concept seems slightly interesting on paper, I found myself kinda bored and annoyed by the movie. I've also already seen this recolouring idea before in a lot of video games. I wonder how many video games have actually been influenced by this movie with the idea of recolouring the world? But it doesn't matter what came first, because the cool look of the movie already seems old hat to me. It doesn't help that I generally don't really like this particular era either, and it's even more exaggerated by the goofy way everyone acts because they're all TV characters that aren't real.

Even the weather changes, raining for the first time ever in the town

At first, seeing the odd colour here and there was interesting, and seeing some of the confusion of the TV characters reacting to was David and Jennifer are doing is amusing. The problem is that it just feels like the same 2 tricks over and over for the whole film. It's always about adding colour, and it's always about getting the townspeople to act more "normal".

There is another slightly interesting spin in the movie in that it touches a bit on racism when the town has a lot of black and white people, and a bunch of techni-coloured people. While I get the idea, and seeing a courtroom scene is reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird where all the black people were forced to sit in the top seats, it also didn't seem to use the concept very effectively. It focuses more on the newly coloured people being like this because they have felt strong emotions. Even then though, the acting isn't strong enough to really make me believe these emotions their feeling. It all just still felt fake to me.

The colourized people just stick out like a sore thumb and look less real than the black and white people

While I can appreciate the idea of using colourization of black and white as a story device, it just didn't really work for me. The colourful people always had that pastel soft look of being colourized and didn't actually look like they were now filmed in colour. The acting didn't work for me, and I felt they were unfocused on their themes they were trying to get across. I don't think I could recommend this movie, it's just pretty mundane to me.