The impact of mass media on contemporary culture is a popular theme in film. Last year's batch of films on this topic included: Celebrity, Mad City, Wag the Dog, Holy Man, and The Truman Show. Ron Howard's previous contribution to the topic was The Paper. His latest addition to the genre is ED-TV.Matthew McConnaughey plays Ed, a video-store clerk who is selected to be the subject of a new TV show called True TV. Like MTV's Real World, the idea is to follow the subject in his day-to-day life so as to capture the gritty realism of life. Unlike Real World, this show will be broadcast live and unedited for every waking moment.As the story progresses, Ed ends up stealing his brother's girlfriend, and finding his long-lost father. There are more than a few embarrassing moments as Ed and his friends and family discover that celebrity is not all its cracked up to be. The story is somewhat similar to the plot line of last year's The Truman Show. What makes this story engaging is that it is obviously far more plausible, and unlike Truman, Ed chooses to participate-at least initially.In addition to the interesting story line, there are some excellent performances by McConnaughey and the supporting cast which includes: Woody Harrelson, Jenna Elfman, Martin Landau, Rob Reiner, Ellen DeGeneres, Elizabeth Hurley, and Dennis Hopper. There are also some great cameos by the likes of Jay Leno, Bill Maher, and Michael Moore.The real strength of the film is its timely and insightful social commentary. When Karl Marx wrote about the fetishism of commodities he could not have imagined the extent to which this disease would pervade our lives. ED-TV manages to comment on television, the internet, tabloids, and USA today. It's easy to blame "the media" but in the end we have, in the words of Pogo, "met the enemy and he is us."The proliferation of cop shows, court shows, real accident shows, and home video shows reveals the extent to which we have blurred the line between public and private, fact and fiction. The postmodern concept of simulacrum refers to the fact that this line is so thoroughly blurred that we can no longer tell the difference. We live in a world that commodifies community and markets meaning like hot dog vendors at a ball game ("Meaning here, get your fresh hot meaning here!"). ED-TV is a welcome commentary on the world we have constructed for ourselves--and in its better moments pretty funny too.

EDtvThe upside to being on TV 24/7 is that you can watch reruns to find your misplaced keys.Conversely, as this comedy confirms, live streaming can cost you your family.To boast ratings, producer Cynthia (Ellen DeGeneres) proposes following around blue-collar Ed (Matthew McConaughey) with a camera.While the first episodes flop, once Ed's family (Woody Harrelson, Martin Landau, Sally Kirkland) is introduced viewership goes up. But when a romance starts blossoming between Ed and his brother's girlfriend (Jenna Elfman), Cynthia introduces a supermodel (Elizabeth Hurley) to up the ante.Spawned from late 21st Century paranoia over the threat of reality TV, this 1999 satire based on a French-Canadian film and directed by Ron Howard doesn't delve deep enough in to the technology it is trying to lampoon to make it funny or memorable.Besides, if people really wanted to watch others all-day then human zoos would be more popular.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Matthew McConaughey stars as Ed, a young ordinary single guy. When a television network decides to make a reality show to follow a man's life, Ed gets chosen for the show.Ed likes the idea but his family and friends disagree with him. As time goes by he slowly realizes how much this show effects his life. He has met the girl of his dreams and their relationship gets complicated because of all the cameras and people following him around.This movie was OK and fun to watch, it might have been a very good movie at the time it was released because people were really hyped on the new phenomenon called 'reality TV', a term that has grown mainstream to this day.

It's a bit of a shame that EdTV is always compared to The Truman Show, because it's really not a rip-off, just a lighter treatment of similar subject matter. With the rise of reality TV in the late 90's, loss of personal privacy was a hot subject and so it's quite legitimate for more then one movie to be made about it; and both movies treat the subject differently, Truman with a more philosophical angle and EdTV with a social one, and with a more comedic direction. And the story does bring its own message, one that's poignant and clear and aged well over the last decade of reality-reign.Unfortunately , none of that helps the fact that the movie just isn't very good. Ron Howard's directorial work, as it always is, is professional but hollow, using every trick of the trade ably and without soul. He can make it slide, though; or could have, if the script would have been better. The dialog may have been written specifically to sound everyday and authentic, but a lot of the lines would have sounded unrealistic if spoken on Big Brother. As for the acting - the horrible Matthew McConaughey actually pulls off a better-than-average performance for his abilities, but it's not enough to pull it together; Woody Harrelson is mediocre at best; much worse yet are two mediocre TV actresses - Jenna Elfman and Ellen DeGeneres - who told Ellen she could act? - who really fall short with very flat characters and very unconvincing deliveries. Some quality supporting actors - Martin Landau, Dennis Hopper and Rob Reiner in a terrific performance - and some nice cameos from Jay Leno, Bill Maher, Michael Moore and other prominent media men of the time, help it along but it's not enough.So for the story alone, it's worth a watch, and it makes some pretty interesting points about the role of the media in demolishing personal freedoms (and it's quite amazing that it was made before the Bush administration, because some direct connections could easily be made) and it's often enjoyable, but while The Truman Show and Pleasantville may be remembered for many years to come, EdTV is ultimately as forgettable as any middle-of-the-road American comedy.