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Ron Howard's latest film has the misfortune of following the superior Oscar-nominated The Truman Show. The similarities are numerous, and when the inevitable comparisons are made, EdTV comes up short. Really short.
The reason Truman was such a great movie was because Truman was completely unaware that he was being filmed. When we saw people tuning into Truman's life on a regular basis, we thought `Cripes! This is really messed up. This guy's whole life has been a big charade and these horrible people are using him to entertain themselves. Media bad. Society doomed.' Andrew Niccol's script was clever, dark and preyed on mankind's paranoid fear both of being secretly watched and of being a pawn in an intricate scheme to have the wool pulled over its collective eyes.
EdTV's script, by Billy Crystal's crap-factory writing team of Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, doesn't have that edge. It features a guy, Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey, A Time to Kill) that knows he's being watched by millions of people. He even had to audition for the part. So, basically, it's like watching MTV's The Real World except that it concentrates on one person. And that it's duller and more predictable.
Like Truman, Ed's real father (Dennis Hopper, Speed) tries to reunite with his now-famous son. Like Truman, the shows producers try to veer Ed away from the plain-Jane girl he really loves (Jenna Elfman, Dharma & Greg) toward a gorgeous ratings-grabber (Elizabeth Hurley, My Favorite Martian). And like Truman, there's even a scene where Ed, arms outstretched, looks up into the sky as rain beats down on him. Jeez, I think I'm going to go rent Truman right now. (2:02 – PG-13 for adult language, adult situations and some sexual content)
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