Original ideas in recent cinema have been hard to come by. It seems that every film is lifting from other films, or is coming from another source like television, books, or comic books. And while good films are being made from all that, sometimes you long for something brand new, at least in concept. The Truman Show is that concept.
Truman Burbank is the unwilling (and unknowing) participant in what can be called the first ever staged life. Arriving as an unwanted pregnancy, Truman was the first child to be bought by a corporation, the purpose being to turn Truman's entire "life" into an orchestrated television show.
Truman's world is his own, and everyone involved in his life is an actor. The town he lives in is, in fact, the worlds largest soundstage - a giant bio-dome which is only the second man made structure (along with the Great Wall of China) to be visible from space. In side this dome, the show's producers control everything from temperature, to rain, to winds, to when the sun rises and sets.
Truman has lived his entire life in this structure, unknowingly followed by cameras everywhere he goes. As he gets older and technology progresses, the cameras get smaller and more abundant. Truman's life is orchestrated according to script, including who his best friend is, what he learns, and even the creation of his fear of water (which essentially keeps him in the "island town" he was raised in. The only thing the shows executives havn't been able to control is Truman's dreams and desires, and the inevitable party crashers who see something wrong with this glorified Skinner's Box.
The entire show starts to come crashing down as, after Truman's 30th birthday, he begins to discover strange phenomenon around him (falling satellites, accidental discovery of the television crew's bandwidth, and a misplaced rain machine). Eventually it's all figured out, and Truman has to fight for his life to truly make it his own.
A wonderful film any way you cut it, the Truman Show relies on concept and story more heavily than acting and direction, which isn't to say that Peter Wier (director) and actors Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, and the rest do a bad job... far from it. And while all the hype surrounding the film is about Carrey's first "serious role" (which really isn't all that serious), there is so much more to enjoy with this film. In fact the concept has left itself open for so much more exploration than what it did in the film (I was actually more interested in the technology used, which Weir, sadly, downplayed).
A recommended theatrical experience, and worth renting again upon video release.