The first entry into TV territory was, of course, The Truman Show, and in many ways EDtv is the inverse of Truman's premise. Instead of placing an unwitting star in an artificial environment, screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel take an ordinary guy out of a bar and follow him with cameras all day. Ed (Matthew McConaughey) works at a video store, has a burgeoning romance with Sherry (Jenna Elfman), and tolerates the money-making schemes his brother Ray (Woody Harrelson) periodically launches. When True TV, a struggling cable network, switches to an all-Ed, all-the-time format, ratings soar and the likable Ed becomes a celebrity. But the new star, along with his family and friends, finds out that fame carries a heavy price when USA Today starts running polls on his sex life and the network won't let him quit.

People in the public eye tend to lose their privacy? The media have a hard time telling the difference between reality and entertainment? What shocking revelations! In sharp contrast to Truman, which used its high concept to examine our society's craving for security, EDtv draws only the most obvious, clichd morals from its hero's two months in front of the lens. The movie's villains are the easiest targets imaginable: network suits obsessed with profits and overnights, embodied by a ridiculously caricatured Rob Reiner. Thankfully for Universal's TV syndication arm, however, there's a programming exec with a heart, played by Ellen Degeneres, who reforms the evil empire from within.

Matthew McConaughey flashes his million-dollar smile a lot during the first hour, and for the privilege of spending more time with his personable Ed, the trade-off of sitting through contrived crises doesn't seem too bad. But as Ganz and Mandel tick off their shopping list of moral dilemmas--the disillusioned girlfriend, the estranged brother, the tempting slut, the long-lost father--McConaughey becomes a confused observer of his own show, and all the life drains out of the film. Elfman's character is unusually colorless, except for some radically plucked eyebrows. And poor Martin Landau, as Ed's stepfather Al, is stuck in a motorized cart and wheeled out for geezer laughs.