With what is definitely one of Jim Carrey's best performance, The Truman Show presents a fascinating story, told from numerous perspectives.

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2001)

The Truman Show is a television show about the real life of Truman Burbank, who has lived his entire life in a giant soundstage and who has no idea that his life has been broadcast to the world since his birth. Clearly, this is not a realist film, but if the production of something like The Truman Show were possible, literally and legally, this is probably about what it would look like. However, given the relatively exciting reality of everyday life (exactly what the movies are there to help us escape from), I doubt that the show would be quite so widely followed, or that it would have such an obsessive fan base.
This is a very challenging type of movie to make, and the effectiveness of it reflects the skill of the films creators. As was the case with the Back To The Future series, all of the obvious problems with such a concept are dealt with and the ways that they are solved are explained in the film. You have people trying to let Truman know that his whole life is televised, you have his deathly fear of water (stemming from his father's `drowning' and explaining his failure to leave his happy home even once during his entire life), and you have things like Truman hearing people on his car radio as they follow his every move, lights falling from the ceiling of the soundstage, etc. All of the close calls' that you would expect to happen when keeping someone unknowingly trapped in a confined space are presented, and when Truman starts to catch on to the whole thing, the movie really takes off and starts getting really exciting.
The Truman Show allows Jim Carrey to engage in several different kinds of acting, even, although briefly, the goofy comedy that he is best known for. But here, he introduces a new kind of comedic acting (at least new for himself), in which he goes along with strange things and pretends not to be weirded out, such as when his wife shows him what she bought at the supermarket, explaining all of its qualities exactly like a TV commercial (`Wow. That's amazing!'), which is intentional because the product placement is the only way to have any kind of commercial in The Truman Show, which runs 24 hours a day. This is tied in with his suspicions about what is really going on when it happens one time in the kitchen of his home, and his wife is talking like a commercial again. This time, Truman comes out and finally speaks what has been on his mind for so long, in a bit of hilarious dialogue that is very effective in the near-thriller story that follows (`What the hell are you talking about? Who are you talking to?!').

When Truman seems to lose it and attack his wife, she screams `Do something!!' and Truman's suspicion's are confirmed. This is a significant scene because not only is Jim Carrey not giving us goofball comedy, but he actually appears menacing, which is totally unexpected given his iconography. Laura Linney plays the role of his intolerably tolerable wife with the incessant smile, and Ed Harris fills in the role of the producer of The Truman Show, in an uncharacteristic but very effective performance. This film is a great example of how an impossible story can be made to work and be fun. Peter Weir lends his direction skills to this unique story, and with great success.