EDtv
This is truly a time capsule: from it’s release it went from an exaggerated future satire to reality, but now it’s just quaint and optimistic. It’s still “just” a romcom with a twist. Worth it for many meta elements alone and a great cast.
This is actually contemporary to reality shows, there are commenting of the state back then, before Big Brother, Survivor, and Real World (mentioned!) were all the rage.
But now, there are literally streamers that turn this into a “paying job”. Not even gaming streamers, just plain weirdness like Clavicular, being followed by cameras just going to bars, asking Syrian girls if they support Assad, shooting alligators. Or Sneako, the Nation of Islam cosplayer.
It looks pretty realistic all around. The program is financed by banner ads, usually related to what’s going on. Ads for condoms when he visits the FemBot chick. There’s also “native advertising”: when he goes to the Jay Leno show and casually asks for a Pepsi backstage, they put a Pepsi vending machine at home. Hell, his brother has a entire scheme to make money of this, the grift is there from the first moment. People watch TV to see where he is going and appear on the background. They look directly at the cameras.
As mentioned, this is just a rom com. Since his life is on TV, we gets reaction shots of viewers decoding what they see, something extremely modern. It’s closer to Anchorman than to The Truman Show, no matter the apparent similarities.
The main cast is great. McConaughey and Harrelson (as brothers!) are just some dumb ass Texans, earnest in their low brow stance, the revel on it even. Jenna Elfman (from Looney Tunes: Back in Action) is smarter, but doesn’t have so many good lines. Martin Landau as the stepfather in the mobility scooter is pitch perfect, as always.
Ellen and Rob Reiner are great as the bad guys, casting her as a bad boss is chef’s kiss.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.