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Surprisingly, it's not a comedy (nor a bad film).
"In case I don't see ya - good afternoon, good evening and good night."
1998 Science Fiction dark comedy/drama starring Jim Carrey, widely considered one of his best movies.
Truman Burbank is a well-liked small-town insurance salesman who lives a seemingly idyllic life. But Truman is discontented, pining after a girl he fell in love with in high-school but who was taken out of his life very suddenly, and strange things have been happening recently; what looks like a spotlight falls out of the air right in front of him, his radio is picking up bizarre signals that are matching his movements exactly, and everything, from his beautiful wife to his loyal best friend, seems just a little bit... artificial. When he happens to bump into a mysterious hobo who looks the spitting image of his dead father, he begins to suffer a paranoid breakdown and begins investigating his environment more closely, something which those around him are desperate to avoid — for the truth is, Truman's life is artificial; he's the star of a globally successful reality show called The Truman Show, directed by the fanatical and obsessive creator/producer/director Christof. His entire world is make-believe, everyone who is around him are actors, and the only one who is not in on the joke is Truman himself. But that's about to change...
Amusing to consider is that, out of the many different reactions to the film, one was clearly ( Cue Irony) "What a good idea." The film came out in 1998. The very first series of Big Brother came out in 1999, and Survivor in 2000. They seemed like a shocking idea at the time. (And the crazy thing is, they were right. Today, Reality Television has captured, well, how much of the market segment?)
This film provides examples of:
- All There In The Manual: A companion book containing the complete screenplay was presented as an in-universe companion to the show itself, containing background information on both the "actors" around Truman and the audience members cut to throughout the movie. (The guy in the bathroom died when he accidentally knocked his TV into the water, for one.)
- All There Is To Know About The Crying Game: As Roger Ebert
 complained, "The Truman Show is founded on an enormous secret that all of the studio's advertising has been determined to reveal."
- This is probably a better example of It Was His Sled due to the fact that the Truman Show has substantially more to it then just being a reality tv show. It was even nominated for several Oscars due to its depth.
- He was incorrect though, as the film itself establishes the "twist" within the first few seconds.
- True it was established early on that something was out of place and it doesn't take to long to figure out what it is. The real plot is what will he do when he finds out?
- Anti Villain: Christof, arguably.
- Artificial Atmospheric Actions: "A lady on a red bicycle, a man carrying flowers, and a car with a dented bumper... they've been going in a loop around my house."
- "Dog Fancy, please." A LOT of people seem to like Dog Fancy magazine...
- Back From The Dead
- Broken Bridge: When Truman tries to escape.
- Broken Masquerade: The entire film is the audience waiting for this to happen and watching how far the television producers will go to keep it up.
- Contrived Coincidence: Deliberately invoked, as the writers will set these up to keep Truman along the path they want him to follow. Of course, when these start building up, Truman starts figuring stuff out...
- Crash Into Hello. Subverted. The woman who was picked to be Truman's love interest falls on top of him but he falls in love with a girl who is sitting on the lawn a little ways away.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Truman's last attempted escape, over water which he is supposed to be scared of, with a storm deliberately blown up and that logically he wouldn't have been very good at sailing, coupled with the fact the director was ready to kill him to stop him finding out the truth, the entire audience are sitting as they were cheering on Truman, Truman still survives. Then after the exchange with the director he turns to the camera, says his catchphrase before browning and leaving the set.
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. Everyday Truman is shown buying glamour magazines, and at first the viewer isn't told what they're for, but he keeps claiming that it's for his wife. Eventually the audience learns that he's using the faces of models to assemble a picture of Sylvia, the girl he wants to marry.
- Crucified Hero Shot
- Discretion Shot...to a Lampshade Hanging
- Does This Remind You Of Anything: The creator of the show is named Christof.
- Domed Hometown
- Easy Amnesia: Parodied.
- Fridge Brilliance: Doesn't Truman find it weird when people cut away to talk about a product? No, because people have been behaving this way for his whole life and he thinks it's normal!!
- At least until he's grilling his wife about all the strange occurrences and she does a blatant product placement about hot cocoa. Truman looks around and impatiently demands, "Who the hell are you talking to? What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING?"
- Also the glamour magazines that he claims are for his wife. He's using them to build a picture of his ideal wife, Sylvia
- Fridge Logic: If you really don't want Truman to ever want to leave the island, then instead of a travel agency full of scary posters of planes being hit by lightning and staffed by a dream-crusher, how about... no travel agency? It's not like every small town has one.
- The travel agency was filled with those posters to scare Truman from ever leaving. Tons of small towns don't have travel agencies and people still go on vacations, so it is better just to scare the shit out of him from leaving in any way.
- God Is Evil: Sort of - since the director is the metaporical "God" and hardly has Truman's interests at heart.
- He evens goes to say, "I am the creator...of a television show."
- Actually he does have Truman's interests at heart and it's shown that he truly cares about Truman, he just goes about handling it the wrong way.
- Up until he's willing to have Truman killed, however. About then, he's basically gone nuts.
- He Really Can Act: This was the first Jim Carrey movie that this troper actually enjoyed.
- Hypocritical Humor: Subtly: the interviewer thanks Christof for the interview, noting how he famously values his privacy - the principal thing, besides truth, he has denied Truman his whole life.
- Knight Templar Parent: Christof.
- Locked Out Of The Loop
- Long Runner In universe. The show has been running continuously since Truman was born.
- Love At First Sight: Truman for Sylvia, despite his friend's attempts to distract him with trumpet playing and his planned future wife's Crash Into Hello. You'd think the producers would just have paired them up to keep him complacent, except for one thing: Sylvia was a member of the group that advocated his release from the show so he could live a normal life.
- Actually, Sylvia was just an ordinary actor, an extra, who wasn't supposed to be in the limelight since it wasn't in her contract. When Truman starts to date her, she realizes how horrible the situation is and tries to tell the truth when she's caught and fired. After that is when she joins the "Free Truman" group.
- Except she's wearing the "where will it end" button before she's kicked off the show, which hints that she's already appalled.
- Meet Cute: Invoked.
- Meaningful Name: Truman Burbank: Burbank because that's where Seahaven really is, and Truman as in "True man", because Truman is the only "real" person in Seahaven.
- Missing The Good Stuff
- Nightmare Fuel: All the extras marching down the streets, looking for Truman. All of the extras.
- That lazy dog seen earlier in the film? Going batshit as it's owner is ordering him to sniff Truman out. Jeez...
- Paranoia Fuel: There is a variant of paranoid schizophrenia now named "Truman syndrome", in which the patient believes that their lives are actually a television show.
- Platonic Cave: Where the "cave" is the set to a television show.
- Product Placement: Parodied - since the show can't have actual commercials, everything Truman uses is paid for by corporate sponsors and people in Truman's life will give elaborate sales pitches of items used in their daily lives. This ultimately leads to Truman's "divorce" when the actress playing his wife does this at the wrong time.
- Pull The Thread: Once Truman starts reacting to his early suspicions, further attempts by the TV crew to repair the illusion begin backfiring, each one mandating it be covered up in turn...
- Rage Against The Heavens
- Rail Roading: Truman's predetermined wife.
- Reality Show
- Reality TV
- Redemption In The Rain: Spoofed — at one point, a scene that looks like it has this potential is ruined when the 'rain' triggers over Truman... and only Truman.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: Not actually shown on film, but a couple of the show's viewers comment that Christof does this when Truman and Meryl get it on.
- Smite Me Oh Mighty Smiter: "Is that the best you can do?" No Truman, Christof can do worse.
- Special Effect Failure: Invoked intentionally. When Truman is looking at old photos with his mom and his wife, he notes that "Mount Rushmore" looks much smaller in the photo than it should. His mom quickly turns the page to distract him from the scale issue.
- Early in the film, a spotlight drops out of the sky in front of Truman's house. It's labelled with the name of a star, Sirius, and fell from its fake constellation in the overhead dome.
- Stepford Suburbia: Subverted somewhat, in that Seahaven is designed to be unreal.
- Completely subverted by the fact that they filmed the movie in a real neighborhood in Florida.
- Tear Jerker: Truman survives the storm blown up to kill him when he tries to escape over sea, only to bump into the edge of his world. He starts to despair, then the director decides to speak to Truman directly, explaining what his world is like and what he thinks Truman would expect if he left his world to enter the real world. All this done to sorrowful music. When Truman makes the decision to leave, the sad tears suddenly become tears of joy as he leaves the set and the entire world cheers along with him.
- Tomato In The Mirror: One of the rare examples where the viewer is already in on it when the film opens.
- Trailers Always Spoil: It was originally supposed to actually be a twist; however the filmmakers decided a situation with dramatic irony was better. The trailers, posters, and even the name make it obvious. Despite this, critic Roger Ebert claimed in his review that he managed to see the movie without this being spoiled.
- Villainous Breakdown: Towards the end Christof, when Truman makes his escape attempt, begins to lose it quite rapidly.
- The Wall Around The World: The enormous set of the show. Which Truman breaks through with his boat at the end of the film.
- Weird Moon: The director's observation platform is behind the false moon.
- Welcome To The Real World: The entire film builds up to Truman realizing the world he grew up in was fabricated.
- Why Did It Have To Be Snakes: Truman's fear of water - which was deliberately engineered to keep him from escaping because the town he lives in is on an island.
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