The Truman Show, 1998.
Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Holland Taylor, and Ed Harris.
SYNOPSIS:
In time for the film’s 25th anniversary, Paramount has issued The Truman Show on 4K Ultra HD; the film was remastered and looks great. They also included a code for a digital copy and the previously released Blu-ray that has a copy of the film with older visual quality, along with some legacy bonus features.
My youngest kid is a fan of Perry Caravello, who was tricked into believing he was making a movie called Windy City Heat (as chronicled in the 2003 made-for-TV reality film of the same name) and currently earns a living live-streaming various events in his life. He has “handlers” who oversee those efforts and presumably pay him out of the money they make from subscriptions, fees to meet Perry in person, and so forth.
People around him continue to prank him to this day; one live stream my son had me watch featured someone who claimed to be Tony Hawk (he looked and sounded absolutely nothing like the famous skateboarder). Many Gen Zers apparently get a kick out of posting outrageous comments during the live streams and pushing Perry’s buttons so he starts yelling. (For the record, I’m not a fan of the way Perry is treated.)
I bring him up as an example of the prescience of Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show. Written by Andrew Niccol, the story centers on Truman Burbank, who has lived his entire life in an enormous bio dome that he believes to be the real island of Seahaven. Everyone he interacts with, including his wife Meryl (Laura Linney) and best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich), is either an actor or an extra, and thousands of cameras chronicle his life 24 hours a day.
His life has become an ongoing show that’s a worldwide phenomenon, but as the film opens, Truman begins to become suspicious of the environment he’s in. A light (I think that’s what it is) falls from the top of the bio dome and crashed on his street (a news report says it was a plane shedding parts overhead). Then he accidentally hears someone getting all the extras in place over his car radio, which the DJ attempts to explain away as a police scanner broadcast.
As his suspicions grow, he remembers a woman he was attracted to in college. She was written out of the show, so to speak, in favor of the character played by the actor portrayed by Laura Linney (if that’s confusing, just watch the movie), but he wonders if he can find her again. He begins to rebel against his environment as his attempts to leave Seahaven are continually thwarted, and every so often the film cuts to people watching his story in the real world, as well as the show’s creator, Christof (Ed Harris), trying to maintain control of what’s become a major cash cow.
In time for The Truman Show’s 25th anniversary, Paramount has issued the movie in 4K Ultra HD, with a code for a digital copy and a Blu-ray containing the film and the bonus features included too. It looks as close to the original theatrical experience as you can get these days, and the Blu-ray’s lack of the new remaster (it’s the same disc Paramount previously released) shows the difference between the two.
Unfortunately, no new extras were commissioned for this edition, leaving us with the legacy bonus features. Here’s what you’ll find:
• How’s It Going To End? The Making of The Truman Show (42 minutes): Many classic films start out as one kind of story and morph into another by the time they hit the silver screen. (Ghostbusters is a great example of that.) The same is true of The Truman Show, and this making-of chronicles its history from screenwriter Andrew Niccol’s earliest drafts to the final product.
• Faux Finishing – The Visual Effects of The Truman Show (13 minutes): The bio dome Truman lives in is the only other manmade structure that can be seen from space, aside from the Great Wall of China, and this featurette digs into how it was portrayed onscreen during an era that tended to emphasize old school special effects versus CGI.
• Deleted scenes (13 minutes): Unsurprisingly, this excised footage is in rough shape. None of it would have really added much to the movie anyway.
A photo gallery, two trailers, and a pair of TV commercials round out the platter.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
Originally published July 4, 2023. Updated April 22, 2024.
