I don’t know about you, but I never heard of this movie before. I saw it over the weekend and it piqued my interest. I didn’t know what it was about, but it had Jim Carey in it so it couldn't be that bad, right? My first guess was that it was a parody of talk shows — I was wrong (sort of). Instead, The Truman Show is actually my worst nightmare. Starring Jim Carey, he plays a character named Jim who has been filmed for a reality show since the day he was born. The catch? He has NO IDEA that this is going on. Master-mining the whole TV show is Ed Harris, who “adopted” Jim when he was a baby and hired actors to play his parents, friends, girlfriends, wife, etc. Is that not the creepiest!? They were even hoping to have the first “on-air” conception. F**KING CRAZY!!
As you can probably guess, Jim starts to realize that things are not right. Whenever he wants to leave town and go “exploring” outside of the island he lives on, there’s always a reason why he can’t leave. Eventually, he outsmarts the film crew and “escapes,” but that’s not until the end of the movie. And the end of the movie was what was most disappointing to me. Instead of really sticking it to the film crew, including and especially Ed Harris, he kind of just walks away. And that’s it — the show ends. When the audience realizes that the show is over, in typical fashion, everyone just goes on to find something better. And before you start, I understand the parallels this movie was trying to make. It was somewhat clever and almost ahead of its time as I think the hype of reality shows has increased exponentially compared to when this film came out in 1998. Nevertheless, the film's ending was so anti-climatic that it became more annoying than anything else.
I don’t know if I can honestly say whether or not I enjoyed this movie. Throughout the whole film, I’m outraged for Jim. These are horrible people who see nothing wrong with filming a man without him knowing or, hell, even getting his permission! That freaks me out. I don’t know about you, but there have definitely been moments where I sometimes think I’m on a reality show and don’t know it. But could you imagine if that were true!? I would go apeshit on the film crew’s ass if I discovered something like that was being done to me. Have any of you seen Big Fat Liar? It stars Paul Giamatti (who also stars in this film, coincidently…). If you have, picture the end when the two kids get their revenge on him. That’s what I would do. And probably even more. I'm assuming I'm only one of the few who didn't fall in love with this, as the film has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I can live with that...
Have any of you seen this film? What did you think? For those that haven’t seen it, will you? I’m very curious about all of your reactions! Let me know in the comments!
**I do not own these photos/gifs.
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