Reality...What A Concept

Rating: 7/10 (5 March 2006)

Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like to be the star of your very own "Truman Show"? Have you ever wondered if you in fact are?
Imagine for a moment a documentary, featuring one Debbie Samuels who you remember as that girl you liked in the ninth grade and once thought she liked you. Only here she is a disgruntled ex-actress named Morgana Windemere, who complains about how the writers once told her to give you significant glances, then suddenly decided to "go in a different direction."
"I thought I was going to be the co-star, you know, the girlfriend, but then they said I wasn't working. Even though HE liked me. They made me snub him in the cafeteria and then said my family moved to Canada. Not even a farewell episode." Elsewhere on the show, onetime childhood bullies complain about the unlovable characters they had to portray. "All the writers ever did with that guy was have us beat him up," one complains. "They said it was good for the ratings."
The concept of "The Truman Show" is a lot of fun. Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, who gradually comes to realize he is in fact being watched by everyone in the sheltered community of Shorehaven where he has spent all his life. Indeed, there is a reason why Truman's wife approvingly holds up household products in the middle of dinner conversations, and why the travel agency features posters showing planes struck by lightning: He is the unknowing star of his own sitcom.
I wish I enjoyed the movie as much. Though funny in parts, it is more of a wet-eyed spectacle featuring an often-serious Jim Carrey staring upward in one of those "what-does-it-all-mean" poses that has marked too much of director Peter Weir's work since "Dead Poets' Society. Aiming for maximum uplift, the film sometimes forgets to keep its feet on the ground.
The film is in many ways like "Being There," the fragile but brilliant Peter Sellers comedy with a similarly minor key classical music score. But "The Truman Show" is less sure of what it wants to be. At times, it's a broad satire on modern life, like when Truman watches people walking by his house and figures out they are on a loop. At other times, it goes for a more realistic bent, with a group of people who advocate Truman's release (including Natascha McElhone as Lauren, Truman's version of my Debbie Samuels) and a headstrong director with a God complex, named Christof naturally enough and played by Ed Harris.
"We know how jealously you guard your privacy," a smug TV commentator (Harry Shearer) begins a rare interview with Christof, ironic of course given Christof's treatment of Truman.
More comedy could have been mined from the concept of Truman, but comedy is not Weir's forte and except for that travel agency and a scene where Truman watches his wife in surgery, the film plays it straight.
Still, Truman makes you think even if it doesn't make you laugh, and there's a satisfying conclusion that teases out the metaphysical concepts the movie has played with all along. It's manipulative, yes, but genuinely clever. If it doesn't make you look extra hard in your bathroom mirror the next morning, maybe you're just looking into the wrong camera.