ViewGuide

Created Nov 06, 2016 10:53AM PST • Edited Jan 27, 2023 04:00PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Reality TV has become ever more pervasive since The Truman Show wowed everyone in 1998. Fortunately, none have made an unwitting dupe the star of the show for the first thirty years of his life. Notwithstanding that such a thing would be impossible, it got explored in Peter Weir’s great film of Andrew Niccol’s brilliant screenplay. Add in a young Jim Carrey and The Truman Show hasn’t aged a day.

   Well, maybe it has, as it rings more phony than fresh some two decades hence. Perhaps that’s because social media has since made millions the willing stars of their own Truman shows, or perhaps because a no longer young Jim Carrey has been revealed as a cretinous human being. The bloom is off the rose either way.

   The movie still has much to recommend it, not least its intellectually provocative screenplay, which satires consumers living unexamined lives, viewers living vicariously through TV celebrities, the cultural force of Big Media and the power conferred on the tycoons behind the camera, to name a few. Plus it’s often downright funny, with Jim Carrey mugging for the camera as only he can, or could back in the day.

   The Truman Show remains a brilliant movie. But like the pop culture it satires, it hasn’t aged well.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Jim Carrey became a superstar in no small party by playing the seriocomic Truman Burbank in The Truman Show. He proved that he could be lovable and vulnerable, not just funny and wacky. It’s a brilliant performance, by turns engaging, sad and exhilarating. It reminds us all the more what has been lost in his career over the ensuing decades, during which he became a craven creature of Hollywood.

   • Laura Linney jumps offscreen as his onscreen wife / pitch-woman. The great Linney counts this role as among her Known Fors, no small accomplishment given the magnitude of her career.
   • Ed Harris inspires cold-blooded dread as the artistic Svengali behind the Truman Show. It is a perfectly modulated, entirely insane performance by the great Harris.
   • Noah Emmerich used his trademark oiliness to great effect as Truman’s apparent best friend.
   • Natascha McElhone traded on her fresh-faced good looks as Truman’s crush and best hope.
   • Holland Taylor used her trademark hauteur as Truman’s Mother.
   • Paul Giamatti appears as a bored Control Room Director.
   • Harry Shearer delivers a single scene as a vacuous TV interviewer.
   • Philip Baker Hall doesn’t have to stretch as a Network Executive.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The Truman Show unfolds organically, even though it’s all about deceit. The film opens with a very human closeup, peering into a bathroom mirror, before ultimately expanding to a global audience. This is brilliant filmmaking by the great Peter Weir.

    The satire of product placement and consumerism is especially cutting. Kudos to writer Andrew Niccol.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    The great Peter Weir directed The Truman Show 13 years after Witness and five years before Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, just three of his great movies.

12. Play Really Great 4.5

    Andrew Niccol had hoped to direct the film from his screenplay, but the studio didn’t trust such a big movie to a largely untested talent, so brought Weir in to direct. That worked out for everyone. Niccol has since gone on to both write and direct a string of interesting movies, including Lord of War, In Time and the little seen but very important Good Kill.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Fierce 1.6

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.3

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 3.1

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Surreal 2.7