♥♥♥♥
+ Best Mega-Flop Movie of the Year + Best Satire of the Year
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| This eye-catching poster for Ron Howard's EDtv conveys the intrusiveness of cameras that the plot centers around |
A major reality TV channel launch their new venture: 24 hour a day covering of one person's life. That person is 30 year-old Ed, who works in a video store and is falling for his brother's girlfriend.
EDtv is written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (Robots (2005), both) and directed by great Oklahoman filmmaker Ron Howard (Cocoon (1985)), based on the Canadian film Louis, 19, King of the Airwaves/ Louis 19, le Roi des Ondes (1994). Howard plays the material broadly, and he continually brings us audiences into Ed's drama along with the TV audiences by their screens, which is a little unengaging and a bit depressing as well, because it puts us in the same boat with the TV audiences who are content to completely pause their own lives in order to follow Ed's...
Luckily, EDtv has some really funny lines and situations, and the cast is phenomenal, filled with endearing personalities: Ellen DeGeneres (Finding Dory (2016)), Woody Harrelson (After the Sunset (2004)), Matthew McConaughey (Fool's Gold (2008)) and Jenna Elfman (Damages (2012), TV-series) are good in big parts, engaging and funny; Rob Reiner (The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)) as the cynical TV channel boss and Martin Landau (Firehead (1991)) as the wheelchair-bound stepfather are both perfect. Dennis Hopper (River's Edge (1986)) is icing on the cake in some of the more emotional scenes.
EDtv is a good movie that seems in some way to participate in the reality TV wave of the late 1990s while also criticizing it some.
Related posts:
Ron Howard: Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011) - Stapleton's Corman doc. is among the year's best films (interview subject)
The Da Vinci Code (2006) - Howard's first Brown adaptation is a popcorn thriller hoot
Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
A Beautiful Mind (2001) - John Nash given the Epic Treatment
1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Backdraft (1991) - Howard's giant, stupid Chicago-set firefighter movie
American Graffiti (1973) or, Cruisin' Modesto '62 (actor)
Cost: 80 mil. $
Box office: 35.2 mil. $
= Mega-flop
[EDtv was released 26 March (USA) and runs 123 minutes. Shooting took place from March - July 1998 in California and Florida. The film opened #3 behind hold-over hits Forces of Nature and Analyze This to an 8.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its second week and grossed a paltry 22.4 mil. $ (63.6 % of the total gross). Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5/4 stars, translating to a notch harder than this review. The film bears a striking resemblance in plot to Peter Weir's highly successful The Truman Show (1998), starring Jim Carrey, which revolves around a reality TV show about one person's life, lived in an artificial world only he doesn't know is a huge set. While Howard's career could take a hit and was fast back on track, (with How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), starring Carrey, and possibly his career's best, Oscar-winner A Beautiful Mind (2001)) the incredibly over-budgeted, hugely expense flop EDtv marked a more severe downwards turn career-wise for McConaughey, who mostly starred in smaller and lower quality films for the following decade before beginning his come-back to form in 2011 with Bernie and Killer Joe. EDtv is fresh at 63 % with a 6.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of EDtv?
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