EDTV

***

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson

Director: Ron Howard

Rating: M

Reviewer: Russell Baillie

A man whose life is turned into a television programme. Yes we saw that last year in The Truman Show.

Now that was a movie.

Whereas EDtv is a Ron Howard movie about a man whose life is turned into a television show, which means despite attempts at media satire, it still comes out feeling like a television show.

That is, it's all soft-edged and broad-humoured and ordinary looking.

It possibly doesn't help that most of the supporting cast, Jenna Elfman (of sitcom Dharma and Greg), Ellen DeGeneres, Woody Harrelson, Rob Reiner - even the director's brother Clint Gentle Ben Howard in the traditional mascot role he always gets in his sibling's movies - have ties to rerun land.

Watching this, you can just see the poor dears all agreeing with each other about how EDtv is just so what happens when your face is networked across the world and suddenly you're a celebrity.

That's what happens to Ed (McConaughey) when he's selected by the True Tv network to become their 24 hour-a-day ordinary average Joe with a camera crew following his every move (bathroom and sex excepted).

Ed wants to do it because ... well, because he's a goofy go-nowhere video store clerk whose overbearing brother Ray (Harrelson in a piece of genetically cross-matched casting) needs the money to build his gym.

Ed initially enjoys his time in the arc-lights, as he goes about his mundane life while public attention mounts (cue chorus of Ed-watchers and media commentators with lines like: "This is a new low point for American culture.")

But then the inevitable complications arise. The main one is that Ed's attraction to Ray's girlfriend Shari (Elfman) goes from latent to blatant. Meanwhile, with the cameras rolling, his family (with Sally Kirkland as his Dad and a hilarious Martin Landau as his stepfather) is heading for Jerry Springer territory. Especially when Ed's real long lost Dad (Dennis Hopper) comes back on the scene, cap in hand.

And then when Ed wants his life back, phrases like "contractual obligations" start being bandied about by those network bosses (Reiner and DeGeneres).

But it's the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl-on-live television bits that engage, mostly care of some old fashioned big screen chemistry and comedic spark between McConaughey and Elfman.

But while EDtv doesn't fully go on the blink elsewhere it's still got problems with tone control - blame a script mixing some cheap-shot laughs and flaccid insights in lines like "Lets get back to the way tv used to be."

Here's another, more telling one from DeGeneres' character: "All that everybody does this business is follow the pack."

No, The Truman Show was not a pack to be followed easily. Here, Howard furthers his apparent aim to be a director who has made a mediocre to above-average movie in almost every genre.

But if his satire turns out overdressed sitcom with the laugh track missing, his romantic subplot is still sweet and sassy enough to skip away with the movie.