The Truman Show (1998)
Directed by Peter Weir
In a picture-perfect seaside town, an insurance salesman begins to realize that his entire existence may be staged and observed by a vast unseen audience as part of a long-running real-time reality TV show.
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25 films that influenced The Truman Show
What critics say influenced The Truman Show
In truth, I can only think of two movies where this really seems to apply: 1998's The Truman Show , whose excoriation of what was then the new form called "reality television" seemed like fantasy at the time and now feels like something that could happen tomorrow if they figured out a way around the legality, and 1976's Network , in which the gorgeously erudite writer Paddy Chayefsky spun a tale of how the news media at its worst is a whorish sinkhole in which the most wretched and violence impulses of humanity are turned into exploitative nonsense to get you good and bloodlusty before the dish soap and car insurance commercials.
In its themes it recalls such films as "Network" and "Natural Born Killers."
Once its premise is set forth, ready-made for easy pontification, ''The Truman Show'' doesn't go on to echo the prophetic intuitiveness of ''Network'' or even send up the lurid voyeurism of popular culture today.
This is not "Network" but a highly enjoyable romp featuring the very talented Jim Carrey, who fulfills Weir's promise as the best actor around for Truman's role.
Perhaps no other film since 1976's "Network" has had the potential to inspire such a debate about the effects of the media on our very societal structure.
While echoing "Network," "Capricorn One" and "1984," as well as the cult television series "The Prisoner," "The Truman Show" defines its own niche.
While echoing "Network," "Capricorn One" and "1984," as well as the cult television series "The Prisoner," "The Truman Show" defines its own niche.
"Truman" has drawn early comparisons to "Forrest Gump," but it plays more like a sunnier "1984," with Christof as a slightly kinder version of Big Brother.
The artifice is enjoyably creepy, at times reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its 1978 San Francisco-based remake.
Take away the element of the fantastic, and "The Truman Show" - the film, that is - has some important things in common with Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life," another story about a small-town fellow who feels cheated out of his dreams.
In these moments, “The Truman Show” becomes the anti-“It’s a Wonderful Life,” a parody of the repressive ideal of small-town America as nirvana that Ronald Reagan reintroduced into American life and that has never really gone away (think of President Clinton’s “I still believe in a place called Hope”).
He's a little like a Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life.
This is "It's A Wonderful Life" through the eyes of Rod Serling.
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Like Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels and The Lady Eve), he seems capable of presenting us with an absurd idea, then exploring its possibilities to the fullest.
Somehow like in Truffaut’s “La Nuit Américaine” (“Day for Night”), we can see what happens behind the scenes as we watch the film.
Like Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels and The Lady Eve), he seems capable of presenting us with an absurd idea, then exploring its possibilities to the fullest.
Like The Stepford Wives and The Truman Show , Seconds takes a science fiction theme and grounds it in suburban reality.
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While echoing "Network," "Capricorn One" and "1984," as well as the cult television series "The Prisoner," "The Truman Show" defines its own niche.
Truman approaches it cautiously, like the apes before the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey," squints up at the blue sky in wonderment and for the first time begins to take stock of his life: dull job, insufferable Stepford wife and frustration at every turn in his plan to flee to Fiji.