Saying it's so doesn't make it so...

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 1999)

God. I wanted to like this film. I think Jim Carrey is a good actor. An excellent physical comic, he's also capable of giving a heartfelt truthful performance. He does it here.
Confound it, I want to like everything Peter Weir does. I frequently don't, but I'm always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who can do a "Picnic at Hanging Rock" can't be all bad. He obviously has the capacity to make us see, feel, understand without overstating the obvious; while skirting the obvious, for heaven's sake!
"The Truman Show," therefore, SHOULD have been one of my year's high points cinematically. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I saw the advanced screening. I returned and actually paid to see it. Maybe the first-view dyspepsia carried over, maybe I hadn't given it enough time.
I rented it.
Okay: I liked it less the second time I saw it. I almost hated it on the third viewing. (I know, I KNOW...A film -- play, painting, joke...whatever -- is meant to be grabbed on a first view, a single exposure. Repeated looks are bound to let us explore the flaws...but, dammit, I was trying to give the thing a break. Really. It IS the kind of thing I should love...)
What's wrong with Truman? It's one of those things that SAYS it's going to do something. It tells us what it intends to show, then proceeds to NOT show us, but to restate the thesis! And the audience is expected to buy into the notion that the film has actually explored the issues... whatever they are.
Truman, for me, is all statement and no delivery. It gives us a wonderfully correct theme...a charming, easy to root-for hero...a potentially exciting and interestingly equivocal villain...then blows it all away because it hasn't got the courage of it's own set-up.
What WOULD make Truman, despite a lifetime of conditioning, get on that boat? NOTHING!! He so easily accepts the unacceptable, he so easily overcomes every problem the film gives him, that there is no dramatic tension, no questions, no...no film!
Of course, it presents us with a user-friendly, feel-good ending. The sit-com man takes charge of his life. Victory. Vindication. And we don't even have a clue what Truman's life -- or Life in general -- is about...nor, alas, does he.
Sorry. Too facile...like Jim Carrey's talking butt...an easy laugh, a go-for-the-guaranteed-result. This film, for me, is a smug, simplistic, self-congratulatory exercise in Hollywood telling us what's wrong with Hollywood - and us.
Go write your own screenplay on this theme. Anyone could do it better.