Black Comedy

Rating: 7/10 (18 May 1999)

"The Truman Show" is about as depressing as anything I know. It is about a society that is so jaded that the interactions in their lives are wholly inadequate--they prefer a fictionalized world to their own. What is really sad is that this began in the fifties with "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It to Beaver" and exists now in the tiresome parade of sitcoms with their vacuous double entendres and empty lives marching across the screen. Whose wholesomeness, whose sexual manifestations are these? With children gunning each other down in schools--desensitized to common respect (and I'm not just talking violence but respect for anything) to mindless, thoughtless pursuits of gratification. We are the idiots watching "The Truman Show." The greatest tragedy is that what might be looked at as outrageous is actually occurring every day--we just haven't put artificial walls around our little town.
Jim Carrey is quite good--he can shine those pearly whites at the camera with the best. But couldn't it have been anyone? His efforts to free himself are not of significant because it can all be rewritten anyway. His obstacles are not important because it isn't the actors who are staging this--it's on the other side of the cardboard. For a movie which qualifies as modern fantasy, this is anything but.