I liked this more back in the day, but this movie is laughable in its efforts to try to convey a serious message while actually having nothing to say. It breaks its own rules constantly, and fails in constructing the most basic "magic" needed to make this possible. At the end of the day, it simply takes itself way too seriously, and doesn't deliver a successful enough allegory to justify it.
shareThe main problem is that the Pleasantville people are living happily in their bubble and don't feel the need to know anything about sex or life outside their bubble. So how exactly would change bring them any more happiness?
sharePleasantville was less of a movie, and more of a sermon pouring hatred and contempt on the values and mores of every preceding generation.
It basically used its two hours to say, "We're the first generation in all of humanity to figure out everything. Our parents and grandparents may have meant well, but unfortunately they were idiots."
It was movies like this that demonstrated how filmmakers began to see themselves as academics, and their naive audiences were their unwitting students. It should have been called "Groomingville".