IMDb #232 Review: The Truman Show (1998)

Source: Wikipedia

In this parallel dimension, Hollywood engineers burn mountains of money to produce a 24/7 TV show about Jim Carrey’s perfectly normal life in the most perfectly boring town in America. Worse, the poor dolt is the only one not in on it. Worst of all, it’s a hit.

How the mundane exploits of a random schmuck capture a worldwide audience is never discussed. Nor how the showrunners keep the show entertaining when Truman’s asleep or defecating (24/7, right?). Nor how anybody could create and sustain an artificial island community under a dome right next to the Hollywood sign.

How’d anybody think this was a good idea? Actually, I’d watch a movie about the pitching process behind The Truman Show.

Once you cease tearing your hair out at the premise (or run out of hair) ... it’s a pretty good flick.

When a guy finds out his life is a lie, he flips out. Understandably so. As the auteur director says: the world is false, but his emotions are real.

Like an insular religious community, they’ve controlled his education, social circles, career, marriage…and they won’t let him leave. His escape attempts escalate in desperation. The director's megalomania break into Orwellian territory and beyond.

Watching the facade crumble is oddly satisfying, though not as much as seeing Jim Carrey struggle to under-react for a change. Interestingly, the way to break the system is to behave erratically. So, to be free, Truman must become…Jim Carrey.

Infer your own satire of our television-saturated culture.

Recommended for seemingly ordinary insurance adjusters, extreme method actors, and closeted solipsists.

IMDb #249 Review: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Source: Wikipedia

A sleazebag journalist schmoozes and smooches through the rich, famous, beautiful women of 1960s Rome, and I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for the bastard.

He dreams of writing literature, **high art**, but feels trapped in the gossip columns. It doesn't help that he chases every pretty tail in the immediate vicinity. His poor girlfriend—first time we see her, she's flopped out on the floor, gasping for breath, having poisoned herself. Sadly, she survives to endure this despicable prick with the rest of us.

But there’s hope. A vivacious American film star visits Rome. A giggling floozy, statuesque dumb blonde. She revitalizes his life for a while, then trickles off-screen. Or something.

This movie was difficult to follow.

Scads of colorful one-note characters flit onscreen to do their duties and subsequently skitter off. Plot points pop up, pop back down. Conversations meander, or segue into tastefully unobtrusive philandering.

And methinks Fellini loves his show-within-a-show sequences, whether nightclub, cabaret, circus, or spontaneous rock-and-roll cover by a jazz band.

Somewhere there’s a satire about celebrity worship that remains scarily relevant today. Somewhere there’s a warning against unbridled hedonism, as demonstrated by the dysfunctional upper-upper class. Somewhere, so I hear, there’s even a comedy. I had to dig for it, but only unearthed the fossilized skeleton of an enjoyable film.

Philosophical musing? Social commentary? Revolutionary artistry? Bounced off my drooping eyelids.

In the end, I identify with the journalist protagonist, trapped in the “sweet life” of watching lovely, wealthy, detestable cretins make themselves miserable in pursuit of fun.

180 minutes.