TV movie

Rating: 7/10 (28 June 1999)

Supposedly, this was the film Jim Carrey needed to make. That as may be but was he really the right man for the job. Carrey has carved a career as a rubber faced comic actor who acts at the top of his voice a lot, but the Truman Show demands he portray what at first seems a mid-life crisis but later develops into full paranoia, albeit justified.
Meet Truman Burbank. He is the future of television. His show beams around the world 24 hours a day. Everyone loves Truman. People collect Truman memorabilia and videos. He has theme bars named after him. But Truman Burbank does not know any of this. He lives in a world populated by principal actors and extras. Truman's life is a carefully orchestrated soap opera. Controlled that is until he becomes dissatisfied with life and wants to move away from the sleepy island he calls home. His repeated failure to get away arouses his suspicion that his life is not his own.
There are many faults in The Truman Show. For instance, onscreen the show's creator Christophe tells us the reason Truman is so popular with the audience is because his life is idyllic. Yet the character we meet is an insurance salesman living in fifties America. No offence intended to our American cousins, but it is never really explained why this irritatingly twee view of America should cross international cultural boundaries.
Another down side are the unsympathetic characters on display. This is surely due to the fact that everyone is playing a character who is playing a character. The only genuine person is Truman and he is played by Jim Carrey and, worse, has led a life so mind-numbingly normal as to be almost abnormal.
The good thing about The Truman Show is that the concept is very strong. Director Peter Weir brilliantly keeps up the Twilight Zone-style paranoia and the film is very well scripted. Despite being generally irritating, Carrey is not a disaster in the role and he does encourage you to sympathise with Truman.
Most of the philosophy spun regarding our TV watching generation comes across as a bit hackneyed, however the final scene of the movie sums up telly addicts the world over.