Two Films, Trapped In Suburbia -- `Pleasantville': Charming Parable About American Life Digs Way Below The Surface

Movie review XXX 1/2 "Pleasantville," with Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, J.T. Walsh, Don Knotts, Reese Witherspoon. Written and directed by Gary Ross. 124 minutes. Several theaters. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of some thematic elements emphasizing sexuality, and for language.

"What the hell is going on?" asks David (Tobey Maguire), a trivia-obsessed 1990s teenager. He and his sister, Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon), have just been zapped into "Pleasantville," a 1950s television program that presents only family-values dramas in black and white.

"You can't talk like that here," says the slightly sinister television repairman (Don Knotts) who sends them into inner space.

They can't, but they do, in Gary Ross' charming and imaginative new big-screen parable. David and Jennifer's casual rebellion leads to meltdown in the superficially innocent town of Pleasantville, where everyone sleeps in separate beds, all the library books have blank pages, and it's always 1958.

"We're like stuck in Nerdville," wails Jennifer, who claims that she was getting "really popular" in the present, where she wants to return pronto. But David, who knows every episode of "Pleasantville" by heart, can see that their presence is gradually altering the nerdiness of the landscape in which they're trapped.

The books are filling up with words, the malt-shop owner (Jeff Daniels) begins to question the meaning of his job, a repressed housewife (Joan Allen) has her first sexual experience, and the resulting flames inspire the local firefighters to do more than rescue kittens from trees.

Like the citizens in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," the people of Pleasantville are awakened from their long slumber by responding to beauty and creativity and by reading, even if Jennifer insists that books are "a dorky fad."

Inevitably, "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and "The Catcher in the Rye" prove threatening to the town's more conservative forces, led by Big Bob (the late J.T. Walsh), who declares war on the "coloreds" - Pleasantville citizens whose enlightenment becomes visible when their complexions turn from monochrome to Technicolor.

Ross' writing credits include a couple of Oscar-nominated scripts, "Big" and "Dave," which also use fantasy elements to present an upside-down version of contemporary American life. "Pleasantville" marks his directing debut, and he does a consistently lovely job, deftly integrating complex special effects into his story.

But the casting may be his single greatest success here. Maguire, who played Allen's son in "The Ice Storm," is endearingly balanced as David, whose unhealthy obsessions somehow lead to enlightenment. He makes the journey entirely credible, as does Witherspoon, whose insufferably shallow 1990s teenager ironically gains something from her exposure to a less open society.

Allen and Daniels make the most of their characters' awakening moments, while William H. Macy, as Allen's husband, is poignantly lost in his "Hi, honey, I'm home" stereotype. Knotts turns out to have been a delightful and logical choice, while Walsh, whose last film this was, once more triumphs in the kind of bully role that he perfected.

What's perhaps most charming about "Pleasantville" is the way it deepens and strengthens after an opening half-hour that suggests that Ross won't be able to sustain his "Twilight Zone" premise for two hours.

It's almost a sneak attack: You think you're watching one kind of film, then realize you're in the midst of something far more interesting.