Edtv

Howard has a wonderful touch with actors, and almost all of them here have their moments. [26 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

With down-to-earth comic instincts, it simply invests its story with a loud ring of truth.

I enjoyed a lot of the movie in a relaxed sort of fashion; it's not essential or original in the way "The Truman Show'' was, and it hasn't done any really hard thinking about the ways we interact with TV.

Like its star, Howard's movie is affable, but has limited range.

Bleach out the colors, backdate the wardrobes, insert Gary Cooper and Rosalind Russell and you've got one of Frank Capra's lesser films.

Howard and his writers are so in love with their own hip self-consciousness that it's a wonder they don't feature film critics discussing their movie.

But it's also Howard's and his audience's misfortune that a good time can be had by all only if nothing of substance gets said.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A decent conceptual drama with a sour twist of social commentary tossed in. Fresh into his career as a leading man, Matthew McConaughey plays into his typecast as a drawling, charming bachelor, this time spiced with the angle of a 24/7 reality show that broadcasts his every waking moment. Naturally, this eventually plays havoc on his personal life, especially when he picks up with his brother's publicity-shy ex (Jenna Elfman). Not quite as interesting or original as 1998's thematic clone The Truman Show, it's still a fair (if light) take on the cult of celebrity with some good, unexpected curves peppering the plot. McConaughey is unbearable in a few scenes, but he's at least believable as the naïve, overnight celebrity everyman adopted by the broadest strains of pop culture. Warm and charming at times, thin and predictable at others, it's a good effort with a curiously accurate prediction about the uncomfortable surge of reality programming that was on the horizon.