EdTV Movie Review

Talk about bad timing. Less than a year after the release of The Truman Show, a film about a man who’s life is a 24 hour television show, Ron Howard releases EdTV, a film about a man who’s life is a 24 hour television show. There is one big difference in the two movies. In EdTV, the man does not know about it.

When a TV channel called True TV is being beaten by The Gardening Channel, a woman (Ellen DeGeneres) comes up with a plan to save the channel, to put a man’ s life on TV around the clock. They select an unintelligent video store clerk named Ed (Matthew McConaughey). Ed enjoys the fame and fortune at first, but when it interferes with his relationship with his girlfriend (Jenna Elfman) and his family, Ed decides that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.

EdTV is different from The Truman Show because it is a comedy. It has a great supporting cast including Rob Reiner, the hilarious Martin Landau (in yet another great performance), and Woody Harrelson as Ed’s brother, who writes a tell-all book called “My Brother Pissed on Me”. Ron Howard has made a fantasy movie that unfortunately gets hurt by what I like to call The Truman Factor. I recommend it anyway.



...or, the real reason we recommend EdTV.