Slippery Hollow

Rating: 1/10 (24 October 2009)

Yet again this film illustrates that the Hollywood machine should on no account attempt films which speak to you at some deeper level. Stick to making thrillers, Sci-fi, romance, mainstream comedy etc which they excel at, but leave subjects like this to the European cinema or at least to the East Coast tradition. Failing that, only a director of the stature of David Lynch has the breadth of imagination to tackle a story line such as this.
Quite simply the problem is that the film cannot make up it's mind whether it's a moral fable or (by a huge stretch of the imagination) a representation of some form of reality. As a result, it continuously flips between these two genres and cannot quite make up it's mind which path to take or which one to stick to.
As a representation of reality, quite apart from the corn like the director wearing a beret (gimme a break), the wife trying to do product advertisement in the middle of a flaming row (!!!!!!) it's just too full of illogicalities and inconsistencies to bear even a remote resemblance to any real life situation. One might just about accept that were the whole populace of the 'set' also in the same boat as Truman himself, the scenario might ... just might ... work, but a solitary figure in a landscape of actors and extras???? Anyone with any experience of working in entertainment media sector could tell you that's simply not feasible. And the 'fable' angle doesn't work either because direction and production strive too hard to show film pertains to a real life situation.
But the most glaring hole in the whole storyline is why go to such lengths (and expense) to examine human reaction in a supposedly 'Real-Life' situation. Just stick enough CCTV's in any small township or village, pay the inhabitants some dosh and tell them to get on with their life. As has been proved time and again, subjects fairly soon tend to forget that they're the subjects of a study and begin to ignore the cameras.