The Truman Show

Bomb Rating: 

"The Truman Show" ejaculates its Hollywood wet dream right onto our laps: a flawlessly run, thirty-year, top-rated television show.

Are director Peter Weir and Jim Carrey trying to tell me that Truman Burbank (Carrey) has been alive thirty years and hasn't had the slightest clue that his entire life is really a television show and that all his friends and family are just actors playing their roles? Give me a break.

In assembling this improbable tale, Weir conveniently skips over the details of Truman's honeymoon with "wife" Meryl (Laura Linney). I can only assume that the woman was either a prostitute before joining "The Truman Show" or is simply the most giving actress of all time. Then again, I'm sure many an actress has heard the words "you're going to have to sleep with so-and-so to get the role" and gone supine like a boneless cat on heroin. Meryl, however, seems like such a frigid bitch that it's hard to imagine her agreeing to even being touched -- much less rogered -- by the dorky Truman.

Another obvious omission is the issue of the TV show's "M" rating -- for "masturbation." Certainly if Truman isn't getting any, he's probably swabbing the joystick on a regular basis. It's at that point that the five or six cameras in the bathroom become a problem. Suddenly little Charlie sitting at home watching "The Truman Show" gets more than he bargained for if the masturbation-cam is left unattended during a shift change or the union worker charged with hitting the "technical difficulties" button at strategic moments has wandered off for another donut break.

Like any Hollywood product, "The Truman Show" ejaculates its Hollywood wet dream right onto our laps: a flawlessly run, thirty-year, top-rated television show. In the real world, I have serious doubts as to whether TV executives can remember to use toilet paper when they wipe their asses. Given that, the premise of the "The Truman Show" couldn't have been less probable if it had featured Charlie Sheen getting a MacArthur grant.