Pleasantville (Netflix)

My wife and I were searching for something to watch on Netflix. After a few minutes of searching my wife said, "I'm going to put on Pleasantville." It has been many, many years since I had the pleasure (That will be my only pun... probably) to watch Pleasantville completely through.

Luckily, seeing a younger Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon enter this 1950's black and white universe was just as great as I remembered.

The Good:

The use of color is nothing short of spectacular. Seeing black and white characters interacting with their color environment or even with other full color characters is extremely striking. I can't even imagine the time it took to make sure that not a single pixel of a character was the wrong color. This was apparent in one particular scene. After the mom changes into color, Tobey Maguire applies makeup to help cover it up, so as to not hurt her husband. Once the application is complete, her eyes are still every so slightly green, like the actresses. That little touch shows that they really took care to make it perfect.

Also, the black and white TV show troupes were absolutely hilarious. Seeing the movie presented as a fish-out-of-water story was definitely the best way to go. It allowed Tobey and Reese's characters the ability to point out just how ridiculous the world of Pleasantville really is.

The Ehh:

Most of the message of the movie was to show how choices affect our life and how we shouldn't be afraid to make those choices. However, there was a weird point in the movie when the movie turned from about making choices into straight up racism. As far as story telling goes, the script demanded that it escalated to that caliber, but it just seemed to hit a little too hard for a little too long. It would have been find if the fear of color was the focal point through the whole movie, but it wasn't, the fear of change was.

The Bad:

The ending was kind of weird. The sister stays in Pleasantville, the brother goes home and the tv mother is with her husband or maybe the diner owner. The ending just felt thrown together without giving reasons for what was going on or why.

Conclusion:

I really enjoyed watching Pleasantville again. It was just as funny as I remembered and just as good.

I looked up the director and saw that it was the first movie directed by Gary Ross. Ross is the same director of Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games, and one of my most anticipated movies of 2016, Free State of Jones (trailer below). After seeing Pleasantville again, now I'm even more excited for this film.

If you have a Netflix account, maybe it's time to revisit the good old days of 1954 through the eyes of the 1998 movie Pleasantville.

That is what I though of Pleasantville. What did you think? And what are your thoughts on Free State of Jones? Let me know below with your unpopped comments and what other streaming films should I watch for the first time or spend time to revisit.