Is the Truman Show Any Good?

It's True, Man

The Truman Show - A Quick Film Review by Nathan Brooks

More like the fake-man show amirite?
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I've never liked reality TV that much. It's always bored me and I'd much rather watch TV that has been specifically written to be entertaining. So a film that satirises reality TV should be a perfect fit for me. So here's the Truman Show. It's a film that satirises reality TV. See where I'm going with this? Me neither.

What I Like

Pretty much everything. The goal of this film was to satirise reality TV (have I told you that yet?) and it achieves it with flying colours. It makes many points about the issues with reality TV, from question of how real it actually is to the abundance of advertisements in television. It makes all these points very well and never falls into any 'satire traps', by making these points subtly, but never seeming like it's just imitating what it's satirising.

All of this is aided by an excellent central performance by Jim Carrey, who many refer to as the best performance of his career (a statement which I have to agree with). He makes Truman an extremely likeable character that you sympathise with, whilst also perfectly exploring how a person would react to being trapped in a fake world that everyone else but him is in on.

Andrew Niccol's script is also excellent, Peter Weir's directing is very interesting, due to the way he implements the hidden cameras in Truman's world, and the score is fittingly weird.

What I Dislike
I have no idea what to write here. Seriously, I have no idea what to put here. I've searched and searched my brain to find something I thought was bad, or slightly off about this film, but I genuinely can't. It's left me speechless it's so good.

What I Think
The Truman Show is an excellent satire, it brings up many important issues and interesting points about television, but also has a very entertaining story with a very likeable main character. It's a very difficult film to find fault with, so I've just plain given up on trying to. The Truman Show is easily one of the most interesting, clever and entertaining films I've ever seen.

Overall: 10/10

Use the force Truman.

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