After 25 Years, The Truman Show Still Holds Eerie Resonance

Before shows like Black Mirror's Joan is Awful, before Big Brother, there was The Truman Show -- a supposedly absurd extension and extrapolation of an early Internet phenomenon where people would stream their lives 24/7.

Easily one of Jim Carrey's more magnetic performances, The Truman Show blended a little bit of comedy with a near-future fantasy about a television studio dome built over an entire town for the singular purpose of having a baby born on air and then have it's life followed by millions of viewers -- without the subject ever knowing he was living on a studio set. (A similar plot was later recycled for Disney's Bolt.)

The idyllic small town life shows its first signs of unraveling when a star falls from the sky -- actually a spotlight holding the place of a star. From that moment on, Truman Burbank (Carrey) begins to notice little things that don't add up, forcing him to question his reality. With the whole world watching -- and a contingent rooting for him to be freed from his prison -- Truman will have to overcome artificially induced fears to travel to the edge of his world... and beyond.

Featuring Ed Harris as the series creator, Christof, Laura Linney as Truman's on-screen perky (and product placement purveyor) wife Meryl, and Natascha McElhone as Truman's excommunicated true love, The Truman Show still holds up on this 25th anniversary Blu-ray release. Where some shows tend to become less believable in hindsight, The Truman Show is one of the few that has become even more so. If you haven't seen this movie, get it now. If you have, get it anyway and relive the surreal adventure all over again.