The Truman Show

Upon reconsideration I had a rather lukewarm response to this prescient but pallid pastel parable of our mediated future. Certainly it skewers the medium of reality tv before it really got started, but by now Charlie Kauffman and Spike Jonze have raised the bar on mindblowing, so this quirky script from Andrew Niccol with placid direction from Peter Weir does not seem all that surprising in retrospect. The creation of the artificial world of Seahaven out of the artificial world of Disney’s made-up town of Celebration is very well done, and keeps your mind spinning between what is real and what is fake. Jim Carrey goes beyond mugging but not so far as involving or enlightening performance, as the real person whose whole life has been created for a real-time tv soap opera master-minded by Ed Harris, the God-like director whom he gives a human dimension. Future indie icons such as Paul Giammati and Laura Linney put in an appearance, and while the latter is perfectly plastic as Truman’s pretend wife, that’s not exactly what you want from an actress who exudes warmth and humanity, even when playing a monster like the mother in The Squid and the Whale. Natascha McElhone is wasted as the figurehead of freedom and escape into reality, but is indicative of the quality that went into this production. So by all means see this film if you missed it, but don’t bother revisiting it as a presumptive classic. The set-up raises a lot of interesting questions, but the film changes the channel without really answering them. That might be a virtue in some respects, but left me slightly unsatisfied in this case. (1998, dvd, r.) *7* (MC-90, RT-96.)