A brilliant idea that can never be copied.

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 2001)

"Truman Show" should have won "Best Picture", without question. The Academy, it seems, has its own bizarre criteria as well as its own agenda. I think it's an outrage that it didn't.
The story itself was simply brilliant. Not only that, when you think about it, the concept of the story is a very difficult one to execute successfully. It would be very hard to show an audience that a certain fellow is living in a made-up world, discovering the nature of his world bit by bit, and then trying to get out from a life where everyone and everything around him existed just to keep him there. A story like this could very easily have been screwed up. In "Truman Show", it was executed flawlessly. For those who used their brains during the film, it would have been easy to feel trapped and frustrated. I know I was. Although most people would have liked to see a more "final" ending, i.e. actually see Truman finally meet Sylvia in the end as well punishment of Christof (most of us like are denouement spelled out for us), the ending was just the right amount; not to little, not too much. Truman's escape brought him to Sylvia, and cut the legs out from under Christof. It was absolutely clever. An average person writing this ending would have ruined it with detail and similarity to other movie endings.
An Oscar for Jim Carrey, and one for Ed Harris as well. Prior to this movie, I knew Jim Carrey had talent, but didn't know he could be so versatile an actor. His performance in "Truman Show" was superb. The writing was also superb. I thought the scene where Sylvia watched Truman sailing and holding the picture he made of her was just amazing.