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If life in the 50's had been like that shown in 50's television series, this would be an O.K. but unnecessary movie. However, 50's television was nothing like the real life of the time, and most people knew that, and laughed at the bland, whitewashed version television insisted on showing. Unfortunately, "Pleasantville" implies that this was the way people lived and thought then, thereby setting up a series of straw men, and shooting them down. Teenagers didn't have sex, there weren't pregnancies and STDs, the pointy bras weren't noticed? Come on! The only things that have changed are that now such things are spoken of openly, and we don't punish behavior and consequences as cruelly as we did then.

If you want to know what the past was like, there are better sources than old television programs.

When the MacArthur Foundation gave Bill Irwin one of its Genius Awards, they distributed free tapes of "Regard of Flight" to public libraries. It's a wonderfully funny, skilled performance by Irwin and two other performers, in classic clown tradition, with lots of satirical jabs at intellectual theorizing about "the theateh".

I have remembered this television movie for 20 years. The story is told mainly through the eyes of a young woman who was the only survivor of a small-plane crash high in the peaks of the Sierras, on a trip from California to Nevada. Although she is injured, she scrambles painfully down the mountain for days, trying to reach help. Her parents, meanwhile, are trying desperately to find out where the plane is, and if anyone is alive. The ending is especially moving, with a surprising twist that has the ring of truth.