Tuesday 29 April 2014

Review: The Truman Show (1998)

Not only is this a film off the IMDB Top 250 list, but this morning it was announced on the radio that Paramount Pictures are going to be turning The Truman Show into a TV Show!

 
 
Last Saturday I half watched Bruce Almighty whilst doing some housework, and it reminded me just how much I love Jim Carrey. I loved his comedies but I also really enjoyed The Number 23, so it reminded me that I still hadn't seen this film! Cue gasps of horror...
 
*Gasp of horror* You think I would be over the gasps of horror when finding out you haven't seen something amazing by now, but I'm not!! It still shocks me!  It has been a while since I have seen this film, so I will be brief!
 
I thought the idea behind this film was fantastic, and increasingly relevant these days with the amount of reality TV show we have now. I was trying to imagine how a modern day version of this would look, but now I won't have to with the new show coming along!  Did you know this film came out in 1998 and the first ever Big Brother aired in 1999? I would have automatically assumed it was the other way round!  That means when this came out it was so far fetched and such a new idea, I wish I could watch it for the first time again before I'd even heard of Big Brother and see if my thought and opinions were different. I actually wondered to myself how that timeline worked you know! I'm happy that this came out first then! I really wish I could go back in time and see it when it first came out...
 
The film itself was great but there are a few things I never understood. Maybe Jenna can help me? Those little moments, like the light falling out of the sky, and the tiny raincloud following Truman around, were they accidents or were the crew trying to get Truman to realise that this isn't actually real life?  I think these were technical errors in the system (which were bound to happen!) but Truman happened to see them, casting doubt in his mind about his 'world'
 
Let's now go to the kind of moment I was waiting for throughout the film!
 
 
 
I read somewhere that the whole of this scene was improvised by Jim Carrey...fantastic!  This doesn't surprise me, he is the master of improv!
 
This was thoroughly entertaining, but I felt saddened by the ending (look away now if you've never seen this before). Truman got to leave the show, but he left behind what he thought was real life. How will he cope in the real world now? He has no job, no place to live, no friends! Very sad indeed...
 
I remember being heartbroken at the end of this film and it affected me for days, I couldn't forget about Truman and where he had gone and was he happy?!  I found this message board which I found amusing suggesting the various outcomes for Truman after he left the domehttp://goo.gl/iUqjF3
 
I personally like 'Because there was nobody looking out for him when he left, he was struck and killed by a bus almost immediately.'
 
Oh wow, that list is brilliant, if a little morbid in places! I love 'Surely he'd go to Fiji'!  'Hit by a cement truck' cracked me up!
 


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