EDtv

Released 1999
Stars Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Ellen DeGeneres, Woody Harrelson, Martin Landau, Sally Kirkland, Rob Reiner, Dennis Hopper, Elizabeth Hurley
Directed by Ron Howard

The film stars Matthew McConaughey as Ed Pekurny, a Texas charmer who is discovered during auditions by a desperate cable channel. He can talk "regular" or he can talk Texan, he says, demonstrating accents as a TV producer (Ellen DeGeneres) watches, enraptured. Televising Ed's life is her idea; her boss (Rob Reiner) has his doubts at first, until she points out their current ratings are lower than the Gardening Channel ("People would rather watch soil").

Ed is signed by the channel, which also gets releases from the people in his world, including his brother Ray (Woody Harrelson), Ray's girlfriend Shari (Jenna Elfman), his mother (Sally Kirkland) and his stepfather (Martin Landau). The first hours of the new show are slow-going (including a toenail-clipping demonstration) but things pick up after it's revealed that Ed and Shari are poised to start cheating on Ray ("I just kissed my boyfriend's brother on television!").

I enjoyed a lot of the movie in a relaxed sort of fashion; it's not essential or original in the way "The Truman Show" was, and it hasn't done any really hard thinking about the ways we interact with TV. It's a businesslike job, made to seem special at times because of the skill of the actors--especially Martin Landau, who gets a laugh with almost every line as a man who is wryly reconciled to very shaky health ("I'd yell for her, but I'd die"). After it's over, we've laughed some, smiled a little and cared not really very much.

Summary by Roger Ebert