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''EDtv'' is a 1999 American
satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
directed by
Ron Howard Ronald William Howard (born March 1, 1954) is an American director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He first came to prominence as a child actor, guest-starring in several television series, including an episode of ''The Twilight Zone''. He ...
. An adaptation of the Quebecois film ''
Louis 19, King of the Airwaves ''Louis 19, King of the Airwaves'' (french: Louis 19, le roi des ondes) is a Canadian comedy film, released in April 1994. The film stars Martin Drainville as Louis Jobin, a television fanatic who wins a contest to be on television. Unbeknownst to ...
(Louis 19, le roi des ondes)'' (1994), it stars
Matthew McConaughey Matthew David McConaughey ( ; born November 4, 1969) is an American actor. He had his breakout role with a supporting performance in the coming-of-age comedy '' Dazed and Confused'' (1993). After a number of supporting roles, his first succes ...
, Jenna Elfman,
Woody Harrelson Woodrow Tracy Harrelson (born July 23, 1961) is an American actor and playwright. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to nominations for three Academy Award ...
,
Ellen DeGeneres Ellen Lee DeGeneres ( ; born January 26, 1958) is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer. She starred in the sitcom ''Ellen'' from 1994 to 1998, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for " The Puppy Episode". Sh ...
,
Martin Landau Martin James Landau (; June 20, 1928 – July 15, 2017) was an American actor, acting coach, producer, and editorial cartoonist. His career began in the 1950s, with early film appearances including a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's ''North ...
,
Rob Reiner Robert Norman Reiner (born March 6, 1947) is an American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence with the role of Michael "Meathead" Stivic on the CBS sitcom ''All in the Family'' (1971–1979), a performanc ...
,
Sally Kirkland Sally Kirkland (born October 31, 1941) is an American film, television and stage actress and producer. A former member of Andy Warhol's The Factory and an active member in 1960s New York avant-garde theater, she has appeared in more than 250 fi ...
,
Elizabeth Hurley Elizabeth Jane Hurley (born 10 June 1965) is an English actress and model. As an actress, her best-known film roles have been as Vanessa Kensington in '' Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery'' (1997) and as the Devil in '' Bedazzled'' (2 ...
,
Clint Howard Clinton Engle Howard (born April 20, 1959) is an American actor. He is the second son born to American actors Rance and Jean Howard, and younger brother of actor and director Ron Howard. His 200-plus acting credits include feature films such as ...
, and
Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...
. The movie received mixed reviews, with some criticizing its similarity to ''
The Truman Show ''The Truman Show'' is a 1998 American psychological satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir, produced by Scott Rudin, Andrew Niccol, Edward S. Feldman, and Adam Schroeder, and written by Niccol. The film stars Jim Carrey as Truma ...
'' (1998), and was a
box office flop A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...
, grossing only a little over $35 million compared to its $80 million production budget.


Plot

Television network True TV is commencing interviews for a planned reality show that shows a normal person's life
24/7 In commerce and industry, 24/7 or 24-7 service (usually pronounced "twenty-four seven") is service that is available at any time and usually, every day. An alternate orthography for the numerical part includes 24×7 (usually pronounced "twenty ...
, created by TV producer Cynthia. They interview Ed Pekurny and his brother, Ray. When the producers see the interview, Cynthia chooses Ed. The show hits the airwaves under the title "Ed TV." It is a total failure at first, as only boring things happen. The producers want to pull the plug, but Cynthia remains determined that the show will succeed. Ed TV gets interesting when Ed visits Ray. Ed (along with the cameramen) discovers that Ray is cheating on his girlfriend Shari. Ed visits Shari to apologize to her for Ray's actions, but a drunk Shari starts insulting Ray, calling him "a bad lay", to the audience's amusement. Ed tries to comfort Shari, revealing he has feelings for her; she reveals she has feelings for him too, and they kiss, making Ed TV extremely popular. At Cynthia's insistence, Ed starts a relationship with Shari, but their relationship is short-lived, as Ed grows more interested in staying on TV and Shari is abused by viewers who find her unappealing. Ed goes on ''
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jay Leno that first aired from May 25, 1992, to May 29, 2009. It resumed production on March 1, 2010 and ended on February 6, 2014. The fourth incarnation of the ...
'' and meets beautiful model and actress Jill who takes a liking to Ed. Ed visits Shari, who tells him she does not want to be with him until Ed TV stops airing. She then leaves town. Ed goes to a park to play football with Ray when Jill arrives to invite Ed over for dinner at her house, as Cynthia brought her in to earn more ratings. When Ed arrives at Jill's house, there is a massive crowd. The two have a small talk, and kiss on top of a table. They are about to have sex, but Ed falls off the table and lands on her cat, which results in a sore back for the former and a broken leg for the latter. Ed never sees Jill again, and he also finds out his brother wrote a book (called ''My Brother Pissed on Me''). Ed's father Hank, who abandoned his family when Ed was thirteen, unexpectedly visits Ed and informs him that he left because Ed's mother was having an affair with Ed's current stepfather, Al . Ed is furious with his mother Jeanette, who had previously claimed that she'd only met Al after Hank left, and argues with her. Ed then gets a phone call telling him to come to the hospital, where he is told his father died making love to his wife. Ed assumes the father in question is Al, but it is actually Hank, who was having an affair with Jeanette. After Hank's funeral, Ed becomes disheartened by how the producers want him to stay on longer and that he cannot do anything to change their minds or he would be in breach of his contract. Ed is depressed until he notices a disguised Shari. He chases her to a women's bathroom in a movie theater, where she explains that she is staying with her brother for his birthday and that she just wanted to see Ed. Ed vows to find a way to end the show to be with Shari. When Ed exits, one cameraman stays with Shari, explaining that it is the producers' new idea: Ed's entire family is being filmed, but they will focus on the most interesting person, eliminating his family's right to privacy for as long as the show will air. Ed gets an idea on how to stop the main producer from airing the show: he will give $10,000 to the person who can give him the best amount of "dirt" on the producers and that he will announce it live, with the desired result being that they stop airing the show before he can make the announcement. As Cynthia feels sorry for Ed, she tells him a secret of the main producer. Ed announces the secret (that the man has to pump a liquid into his penis to get an erection), but before he can announce who it is, the show is taken off the air. After the camera crew finally leaves Ed's apartment, he and Shari renew their relationship and celebrate as TV news panelists predict Ed will be forgotten in a short period of time.


Cast


Release

The film was screened out of competition at the
1999 Cannes Film Festival The 52nd Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 23 May 1999. Canadian filmmaker, actor and author David Cronenberg was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the French–Belgian film ''Rosetta'' by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The festiv ...
.


Reception


Box office

The film was a
box office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...
, grossing only $35.2 million against a production budget of $80 million.


Critical response

On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 64%, based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's consensus states: "If it's not as ambitious as ''The Truman Show'' in satirizing the voyeuristic nature of television, ''EdTV'' is an amiable, witty comedy with fine performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson." On
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
the film has a rating of 48 out of 100, based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by
CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Ross Anthony of ''Hollywood Report Card'' questioned the plausibility of parts of the script but wrote: "Though the thunder of its big idea may have been lost to ''
The Truman Show ''The Truman Show'' is a 1998 American psychological satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir, produced by Scott Rudin, Andrew Niccol, Edward S. Feldman, and Adam Schroeder, and written by Niccol. The film stars Jim Carrey as Truma ...
'' .. this screenplay still has real and punchy dialogue. Despite its faults ''EDtv'' will engage from beginning till end."
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
, ''
Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'', gave the film 2 and a 1/2 out of 4 stars. Ebert says that although they share the same idea, ''The Truman Show'' is a parable, and EDtv is an ambitious sitcom. Ebert wonders what type of person would sign up for a show like this, and doesn't believe Ed is that kind of person so "the film never quite feels convincing."


See also

*
List of films featuring surveillance There is a significant body of films that feature surveillance as a theme or as a plot arc. These are a number of these films produced in the United States and other countries. List of films References Bibliography * * * * * * * External l ...
* ''
The Truman Show ''The Truman Show'' is a 1998 American psychological satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir, produced by Scott Rudin, Andrew Niccol, Edward S. Feldman, and Adam Schroeder, and written by Niccol. The film stars Jim Carrey as Truma ...
'', a 1998 satirical comedy movie about reality television released a year before ''EDtv''


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Edtv 1999 films 1999 comedy films American comedy films Fictional television shows Films about television Films produced by Brian Grazer Films directed by Ron Howard Films set in San Francisco Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area Films shot in San Francisco Imagine Entertainment films Universal Pictures films American remakes of Canadian films Films with screenplays by Lowell Ganz Films with screenplays by Babaloo Mandel Films scored by Randy Edelman 1990s English-language films 1990s American films