Pleasantville

Fun and entertaining, in a way. A story about two siblings who are sucked into an old television show. The boy (Toby Maguire) loves it, but the girl (Reese Witherspoon) hates it. As the characters grow and change, colors start to come into the black and white world. And the residents don't know what color is...
It seems simple enough at first, but I started to notice some interesting things. For instance, there is a scene where Maguire's character starts to like one of the girls. They drive off to the "lover's lane", and in the scene there, she plucks an apple from a tree, and gives it to him. Later, when he is asking the TV guy, "What did I do wrong?", the TV guy (Don Knotts) shows him an image of him eating the apple, and says, "That! You don't think that's wrong?"
The first color appears when Witherspoon kisses a flirtatious boy at the school. His ideas of heavy flirting are limited to holding hands and giving her his pin. She introduces him to modern flirting. And it rocks his world. When she leaves, he sees a rose. And it is red.
The teenagers of the town discover the world of lovemaking in old convertibles under the stars. It is their way of breaking out of the monotony and repetetive, boring perfectness of their black and white world. And when they have done it, then the next morning, they are colored. When Witherspoon teaches the mother how to have fun without her husband, the mother becomes colored. She has changed. In the end, the people who are opposed to breaking out of the norm are still in black and white. They create rules opposing "colored" people. (An obvious reference to racism). But the colored people rebel, and start deliberately vandalizing the town with color. They laugh at the list of rules they must follow, and throw it aside. (...the ten commandments?)
Reese's character, although she was the most promiscuous of all the girls in the town, was still in black and white. She did not change until she took an interest in books, and actually declined a date.

I recieved mixed messages from the film; it promoted rebelling, and put intercourse on a pedestal of happiness that is unrealistic to love. It also seemed to point out that the point is to be happy. And if the rules do not make us happy, then they can be ignored.
On the other hand, it showed the silliness of racism, and the fact that just because everyone else is doing it does not mean that it's the right decision. (Shown in Witherspoon's new love of books.)

But in my book, the cons outweigh the pros for this movie. There is much innuendo and many suggestive parts. It is not something I would feel comfortable allowing my children to watch.

2 out of 5 stars.