Japan--currently steeping in its worst recession in 50 years--needs a hero who can survive this, the worst scenario imaginable. Viewers feel reassured, because if he can get through this, then they, too, can get through anything. Similarly, Americans have embraced reality-based television, like MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, where young adults are housed in close proximity and allowed to duke out their problems in front of a national audience. Like the Japanese, we eat it up. Perhaps we enjoy the chance to live vicariously through others--if these morons can work out their differences, then why can't we? However, those on camera are forced to pay a hefty price for their fame: the complete loss of privacy and, some might say, dignity.
In the new Ron Howard film, EDtv, this notion is taken to new extremes. Ed Pakurny (Matthew McConaughey) is our everyman (if your everyman happens to be a redneck living in San Francisco), and he's been chosen to star in a new show, in which every minute of his life will be broadcast live on national television, unedited and uninterrupted, for an entire month. All the network bigwigs predict a quick and painful failure, but the show's producer (Ellen DeGeneres) remains hopeful even when the show starts out as a crashing bore.
The show begins to attract interest as the audience takes a liking to Ed's family, and as viewers become intrigued by his budding romantic relationship with his brother's girlfriend, Shari (Jenna Elfman). Soon the nation is hooked on the minutiae of Ed's life, and his instant celebrity not only puts the kibosh on his relationship with Shari, but on any kind of relationship with anyone the cameras come in contact with. Ed finds himself legally unable to escape from his own show, and in way over his head.
Though comparisons between EDtv and The Truman Show come naturally, they are really two different animals. The world of The Truman Show was brimming with directorial detail and was ultimately more controlled--filled with dread, and far more confining. Just as Truman finally realizes his whole world is a prison, that he's encased by even the sky itself, the viewer leaves the theater with an eerie sense of being controlled by outside forces. More than enough books have been written on television's influence, on how Machiavellian media moguls are intent on controlling the minds of the masses, but EDtv probably offers a more realistic view of how television actually works. In this film, the creators of the show are network boobs whose right hand never knows what the left is doing. They stumble into their success and, just like in real life, they're usually up-ended by their own greed.
That said, EDtv is a good-natured hoot, the likes of which we haven't seen since Ron Howard's heyday of Splash (1984) and Night Shift (1982). Ed is a completely guileless character, happily blind to the possibility of any outside forces--like being on television 24/7--influencing him. Matthew McConaughey, who under normal circumstances I HATE, is charming as the easy-going, unflappable Ed. Even when he's tempted over to the "dark side" by Elizabeth Hurley, an opportunistic model/tramp, Ed just giggles at his good luck, as if this is just another happy accident of his newfound fame.
EDtv certainly takes its shots at the television industry (like setting up Pepsi machines in Ed's apartment for product placement), but the film's main target is the public's relationship with celebrity. This is where the film gets heavy-handed. Throughout the action, EDtv cuts away to show people watching and responding to the show, but these one-dimensional characters serve only as the most obvious Greek chorus, instructing the movie audience how to react. The point--that the reactions of television viewers are taken into account by network execs--is well taken, but it's inexplicable that the TV viewing audience would suddenly turn against Jenna Elfman's character as a suitable match for Ed... especially when she is sooooo goddam cute!
EDtv is blessed with a good cast-- especially Woody Harrelson as Ed's brother, Ray--and though the cinematography is as flat as in your standard sitcom (and the ending no more imaginative), this is a light, breezy comedy that doesn't insult you too much while you're watching it, and doesn't give you too much to think about afterward. It's just a good time at the movies, and maybe that's all a movie audience wants and needs right now.
