Pleasantville
1998
****
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, J.T. Walsh, Jeff Daniels
Back to the Future meets The Truman Show in this highly original but delightfully old-fashioned fantasy about a feuding brother and sister who get sucked inside a 1950s sitcom. These modern teenagers are forced to live in the past and play the archaic characters on the show. The clever and touching story deals with racism, prejudice, emancipation and the overall paranoia in the 1950, as the symbolically and literally black white world turns into colour. This change is beautifully realised.
