Greatbut overshadowed by the original script

Rating: 9/10 (26 March 2006)

The concept of this film is genius: Truman is the star of his own series, and he doesn't know it! A wonder that Hollywood finally managed to create an intelligent, funny, emotional, esoterical, mysterious, philosophicalin short an all covering film that is really touching. In the first, somewhat overlong half the story is following the main hero Truman through his point of view and elaborating his quiet, normal life while the director Peter Weir is cleverly choosing strange camera angles to give the feeling as if he is being spy-ed by someone. In the second, and much more intriguing part, the story shifts to the outside" world and to Christof's 10 mile wide studio from which Truman is being monitored by 5.000 cameras 24 hours a day for a TV show.
---------------------
The themes of this sci-fi tragicomedy are quite fascinating existential ( finding out who we are and stopping anyone who wants to control our life ), philosophical ( what is real and what not? ) and even subversive ( the media changed the world so much that even a lie can pass as truth ). One of the best scenes is the one where Christof touches the sleeping Truman on the screen at night, creating a strange feeling how he is present in his life although he never met him!"The Truman Show" deservedly won 3 Golden Globes for best score, main actor Jim Carrey and supporting actor Ed Harris, who was also nominated for an Oscar.
Still, as much as I love it, I have to admit that the original shooting script by Andrew Niccol overshadows it. There we had a much more intimate storyline and original ideas. Some of the highlights there were that the location was New York (!), the scene where Truman accidentally discovers the word Trumanesque" in the dictionary, the building of the fake town Sydney, Chloe's marching in into Christof's room and telling him that Truman didn't masturbate for 2 months, the dialog between a caller and Christof ( I enjoyed your work, Christof, but I can't say I saw all of it."  Who can?" ) or when Truman disguised himself while entering an xxx store all the while some two viewers had an ironic dialog ( What's with the disguise?"  Maybe he doesn't want to be recognized." ). I can't understand why those scenes were deleted. True, the script ending is much weaker than the movie ending, but all in all it gives an better impression - and elaborates the plot more. It's sad because with that script this could have easily been even better.
Grade: 9/10