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She's not exactly sure why, but TV producer Cynthia (Ellen DeGeneres) has the hunch that just televising the everyday activities of some Joe Shmo will somehow touch a receptive nerve, perhaps please the vanity in Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Average. "What do we have to lose?" she asks. "We're already trailing behind the Gardening Channel. They're watching soil instead of us."
But who will be the common man, the ultimate everyman? Open casting at a singles bar in San Francisco unearths Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey), a roguishly handsome video store clerk with much more smile than sophistication and even less ambition. When he's asked what he studied during his only year at junior college, he muses: "Study? Yah, that would have been a good idea." They sign the likeable lad. Television history is about to be made, or so hope the folks at True TV.
Unfortunately for director Ron Howard, not much movie history is made. While about forty percent of the idea takes flight, the remainder of the premise is left taxiing on the runway, bogged down in the same story mechanisms that have fuelled films about sudden stardom since time immemorial. But it's a good-natured try just the same, and not without its laugh-out-loud moments.
Things don't bode too well on day one when Ed kicks off the show with a lesson in the joys of toenail clipping. Though a small core of curious observers is initially infatuated with the bold experiment, they can't explain exactly why. Director Ron Howard, deftly managing a decent, albeit overlong, script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, humorously revisits the same set of diverse viewers (a gay pair, a black couple, four chefs, etc.) throughout the film to establish audience reaction to EDtv.
The applause meter eventually bears out Cynthia's intuition. It happens when Ed vies for brother Ray's (Woody Harrelson) sorely unappreciated girlfriend, the sweet, unassuming and very insecure Shari (nicely realised by Jenna Elfman). Bingo. With romantic conflict come ratings. The real-life soap opera that evolves becomes an entertainment phenomenon. Ed, his family, and anyone the overnight sensation comes in contact with become fair game for public scrutiny. In "A Star Is Born" fashion, and with about as much dramatic subtlety, USA Today takes daily polls, asking galling questions like, "Is Shari Good Enough For Ed?" The Pekurny family's dirty laundry is aired wholesale, the public champing at the bit for every sordid detail.
Mom Pekurny (Sally Kirkland), all these years the suffering cuckold, sees her martyr reputation threatened when the show's popularity causes ex-husband, Hank (Dennis Hopper as Ed's Skid Row dad), to come out of the woodwork. Nothing is sacred, least of all anything remotely connected to sexual history, preference, or proclivity. Here the tale sullies itself in the usual bawdy aspersions and embarrassments, reminding of situations that haven't been original since they were the groundbreaking trademark of TV's Soap in the late '70s.
But the conventional treatment doesn't embarrass so much as disappoints. That's because EDtv, despite all its comic impetus, hints that it has some answers to those perennial questions about our love-hate affair with TV first posited by Marshall McLuhan. Alas, amidst the great technical effort True TV's mobile crew exhibits in their cutting edge coverage of everyday Ed, no great insight is forthcoming. EDtv recalls but doesn't approach the philosophical daring celebrated in Meet John Doe, a classic paean to the common man starring Gary Cooper as the media-manufactured hero and newswoman Barbara Stanwyck as the disingenuous puppeteer who ultimately gains a conscience. While Miss DeGeneres is no Barbara Stanwyck, she's competently whimsical as the show biz exec answer to Dr. Frankenstein.
Other good performances that partially compensate for the film's conceptual shortcomings include a very funny Martin Landau as Ed's endearing stepfather; Woody Harrelson as Ed's opportunistic brother; and Rob Reiner as the self-congratulating station boss.
Just what is television's real purpose? Is it to educate, perhaps even to enlighten, or is it just a modern delivery system for entertainment? And what happens to us after we've had our fifteen minutes of fame? Don't look here for answers. For Ed, television is nothing more complicated than a newfangled update on the old fun house mirror, but with coming-of-age consequences. And of course, his odyssey through the looking glass has a romantic angle thrown in for good measure. All very typical. All nicely predictable. Filmgoers expecting something more profound from EDtv are advised to tune in elsewhere.
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