EdTV takes stab at media and celebrity
But remake of Louis
the 19th doesn’t
go far enough
EdTV, starring
Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman and Ellen DeGeneres, is
directed by Ron Howard. Rated PG-13 for sex-related
situations, partial nudity and crude language.
By
Peter T. Chattaway
ChristianWeek film critic
When The Truman Show came out last year, many people saw in it a critique of the modern media and celebrity culture. Although there were elements of that in the film, I did not think that was its most salient feature, since Truman Burbank himself was neither obsessed with the media nor aware of his own celebrity. Rather, for him, the film was a romantic tale in which he learned to reject the artificial safety of friendship, marriage and community in order to follow the yearnings of his heart.
For a film that takes a more direct stab at the media and celebrity, you could do worse than EdTV. Ron Howard’s first comedy in several years is already drawing numerous comparisons to the Jim Carrey flick, but it’s actually a remake of Louis the 19th: King of the Airwaves, a Quebecois effort which happened to be the top-grossing Canadian film of 1994.
In both films, a man agrees to let TV cameras follow him night and day as he sleeps, wakes up, goes to work, hangs out with his friends, visits his family and, as it happens, falls in love. The public gobbles it up, oddly transfixed by the sight of a normal person living an ostensibly normal life. But of course, his life does not stay normal for long, as fans go out of their way to appear on his show and corporations vie for an opportunity to place their products in his apartment.
In the original film, Louis Jobin (Martin Drainville) is a media junkie who initially yearns for the spotlight but learns the hard way that being the centre of attention isn’t everything he thought it would be. But in the remake, Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey) gets to be the star of the show almost by accident; he’s the quintessential nice guy, a guileless innocent who doesn’t go after the cameras yet doesn’t mind if they follow him around. He’s the kind of celebrity we’d all like to be–popular, yet, to all appearances, casually unconcerned about his own popularity.
Opportunists
The characters surrounding him, of course, are another matter. His brother Ray (Woody Harrelson) wants to use the non-stop telecast to promote his plans for a new gym; instead, the cameras capture him the morning after a one-night stand. Ray’s girlfriend Shari (Jenna Elfman) rebounds instantly, kissing Ed on camera; the next thing she knows, national newspapers are polling their readers to find out if she’s right for him. And then there are Ed’s parents–including a long-lost father (Dennis Hopper)–who unintentionally lets a skeleton or two out of the closet.
Eventually, the executives running the show–including Cynthia (Ellen DeGeneres) and the (almost) shamelessly opportunistic Dr. Whitaker (Rob Reiner)–decide to spice things up, hiring a model (Elizabeth Hurley) to get Ed’s attention and lure him over to her apartment for some casual sex. Ed, blissfully unaware that she’s just doing it for the money, plays along, hiding behind an it’s-just-sex, boys-will-be-boys mentality that his audience seems to accept (although one lone protestor does stand outside with a sign that reads "Abstinance [sic] is OK").
It’s at this point, more than any other, that the film fails to provide the media critique that it could have given. Howard and his crew do not merely observe the TV crew’s titillation of the audience; they indulge in it. Similarly, the frequent cameos–Jay Leno, Bill Maher, George Plimpton and Michael Moore, among others, all comment on the film’s fictitious events–serve to reinforce the celebrity culture, and the product placements scattered throughout the film are never called into question the way that they were in Louis the 19th.
The original film, though it had its flaws, refused to let the "average viewer" off the hook; it offered a sharper critique of people who watched too much TV or were prone to making snap judgments about another person’s life. Moreover, Louis learned to overcome his addiction to television. EdTV, however, plays more like a sitcom: Ed has no real flaws, everyone else–save the buffoonish TV execs–is essentially okay, and in the end, no matter what happens, life can always go back to the way it was.