OK but nothing startling

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2013)

Like everyone else says, it's dead good. Jim Carey shows that he can actually act. Ed Harris shows that his acting is entering the superclass league. The script is grand. All the supporting actors give sterling performances. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll talk about it afterwards. And yet I can't help feeling it's not quite the five-star smash that all the other reviewers say it is. It's derivative (Stepford Wives, It's a Wonderful Life (the town), 1984, Philip Glass (even though he didn't write the music)), it has plot holes the size of Texas, it has a happy ending that struck me as more likely to be the result of voting by brainless preview audiences than the author's intent. But why carp? It's better than the average Hollywood film for sure and well worth the admission price.
I think it's something to do with the things in which you've been immersed for a lifetime. The average film critic falls over in amazement when she discovers something that is not European and not utterly brainless because she has been raised on a vapid, soulless, utterly boring diet of literature and film based around the emptiness of family drama, where middle-class comment passes for politics and consideration of real intellectual ideas is anathema. On the other hand, the average spotty youth or youthess who has even glanced at the only true literature of the 20th century (I mean science fiction of course) or considered the history of philosophy, even at the amoebic level of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", will see The Truman Show and cry out "Yeah, very pretty but tell us something new."
So, my advice to you is see the film. If an idea has ever crossed your brain you will probably enjoy it though be puzzled at what all the fuss is about. If you are a film critic for the "quality" press you'll think it's the second coming.