Screenwriter Gary Ross (Big, Dave) makes his directorial debut with this visual powerhouse of a movie that gets a little bogged down by a heavy-handed script. Pleasantville is the name given to a Father Knows Best-type T.V. series, where everything is peachy and black and white.

Tobey Maguire (The Ice Storm) and Reese Witherspoon (Fear) begin the film as siblings caught in the real world, where parents divorce and being popular is important. While fighting over the television remote, they find themselves zapped into Pleasantville. A development that pleases Maguire, a shy high schooler who's seen nearly every episode multiple times. Witherspoon, on the other hand, finds it to be a colorless place full of inexperienced boys. These two change this small town into a completely different place.

First and foremost, this film is a technical marvel that offers color with black and white interaction seamlessly. The performances are solid, especially William H. Macy and Joan Allen as a married couple straight out of the 1950s. It also contains the final performance of J.T. Walsh, and a good one at that. Surprisingly, flat is the usually dependable Jeff Daniels (Dumb and Dumber).

Pleasantville is one of those films where either you buy into the whimsical fantasy or you don't. In that aspect it's kind of like The Truman Show, which served as a flipside to this film. It's also the third film of the year that has a story that can't live up to the striking and daring visuals, the other two being Dark City and What Dreams May Come. Still, I suspect this film will strike a warm chord with audiences.