THE TRUMAN SHOW A film review by Andrew Hicks Copyright 1998 Andrew Hicks
(1998) ***1/2 (out of four)
I don't know how many other people have had the idea cross their mind that their life could be an ongoing television show watched by another world of people, but it's something I used to wonder about when I was younger. I can't decide if I first thought it because I watched a lot of TV or because my brother hit me in the head with a baseball bat, but I'm pretty sure Andrew Niccol, screenwriter for THE TRUMAN SHOW, has had the same curious thought.
THE TRUMAN SHOW is about a man (Jim Carrey) whose entire life has been engineered by a corporation and marketed to the public. Since birth, he's been living in the fictional island town of Seahaven, Fla., which actually exists as a giant domed set just beyond the Hollywood sign. All the people in Truman Burbank's life are actors, and the anonymous townfolk paid extras. People watch Truman's life 24 hours a day, live, with no commercial interruptions. Revenue comes instead from product placement, a staple of contemporary Hollywood, with Truman's friends and relatives describing their consumer items in cheerful and optimistic tones. The sun rises and sets on cue and everyone likes everyone else.
Even if you haven't seen THE TRUMAN SHOW, you've probably learned most of the crucial details from the commercials, the trailer and other promotion blitzes. If anything I've written so far is a surprise to you, then I pity you for making me a primary source for your entertainment news. Either way, you should probably know the premise of THE TRUMAN SHOW going into it, because otherwise you'll probably think it sucks. It begins with Jim Carrey looking into a mirror, reciting the crucial "eat me" scene from ALIVE, wishing his neighbors a good day, afternoon and evening, and living in domestic bliss with his wife (Laura Linney).
But weird things start happening. A stage light comes falling out of the sky, Truman hears people tracking his movements on the radio and he swears he sees his dead father. We learn through a flashback that his father drowned when Truman was a child, sailing through a rainstorm. The death was staged by director Christof (Ed Harris), who wanted to put a fear of water into Truman to keep him from leaving the island.
Similar cruel manipulations keep him from stumbling upon the truth, not the least of them Truman's best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich), who assures him he's not in on any conspiracy because the last thing he'd ever do is hurt him. As Truman's trusting eyes tear over, Christof fades up emotional synthesizer music for a worldwide audience of people who apparently never watch anything else. There's even a daily behind-the-scenes update from Harry Shearer that captures the highlights of Truman's existence.
The key to a movie like this is in finding the right balance between humor and drama, because a premise like this has its obvious implications in both directions. And it all hinges on Carrey, who has to balance comic naivet with a real sense of longing and drive to find out what the hell is going on. He's come a long way from talking butt cheeks in ACE VENTURA. Most fundamentally, it's just plain interesting to follow along as director Peter Weir shows us just how they can capture a person's life without the person realizing it -- how they coordinate extras, hide cameras and feed automatic lines to actors.
The most interesting thing about THE TRUMAN SHOW is that most of us can probably imagine some ambitious director pitching a show like this. Sure, the most interesting TV genre of the '90s has been reality programming and Jerry Springer's popularity is through the roof, but those people deserve to be humiliated for turning their intimate details over to the airwaves. And when news shows use hidden cameras, it's done in the name of the greater good, not entertainment. But merge the two and you've got THE TRUMAN SHOW.
Right now, it's implausible -- I mean, the FCC won't let you say the s-word on the air; do you think they'd let you broadcast every detail of a man's life to the entire world without his consent? One day, though, it could happen. And, even though it would mean the end of privacy, people would eat it up. You know they would.
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