ViewGuide

Created Jul 08, 2007 05:22PM PST • Edited Apr 18, 2009 12:57AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Brilliantly High Concept. Funny, sexy, and thought provoking, though many people seem to miss the humor.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   The performances are good to great. This movie provides continued proof, as if Apollo 13 wasn’t enough, that Joan Allen is the Queen of Conflicted Domesticity. Her still waters run so deep the ripples on the surface are positively momentous. The wizened look on her face following her first orgasm is movie acting par excellence. Her “I don’t want it to go away!” declaration makes this movie more substantial than either BTTF or Gump.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

   Jeff Daniels and William Macy turn in the fine character studies we’ve come to expect from these two superb actors.

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Pleasantville’s what the Hollywood swells call ‘High Concept,’ only most HC movies aren’t as brilliantly executed as this: 50s TV-land as ‘traditional’ values Garden of Eden, so long as everyone stays nice and straight. And boring. Within this HC, the brilliant writer, director, and producer (guess that makes him an auteur) Gary Ross (he of the terrific screenplays for Dave and Big, and a name to remember from now on) delivers a wonderfully nuanced and extended tour of American lifestyle migration over the last 40 years. This, of course, is the road originally traveled by Back to the Future and its generally very good sequels, not to mention the richly entertaining genre sibling Forest Gump. Whereas the ideas advanced in those fine movies never strayed far from basic pop culture, Pleasantville goes further, to gender and social role evolution.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Really Great 4.5

    Most of the movie is damn funny. I recommend seeing it with a really smart audience. Mine was kind of dopey. The first half of the movie easily deserves a steady giggle, but the dorks in my showing missed most of the humor. Let’s put it this way: The sister, who progresses over the course of the movie from slutty and shallow to bookish and shallow, would have been bored with Pleasantville in her earliest incarnations, and LOL at it in her final educated state.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

    A word about the sound track. Yes, the sound track. Not just the songs, which were well chosen, or the music, which was, well was there any music other than old songs? Randy Newman got the credit, so there must have been. No matter. This sound track has more quiet moments than an Ingmar Bergman film festival. And they mostly all work. Like I said: Gary Ross, a pleasant name to remember.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.3

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.9

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0