I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to movies, I’m extremely picky.

Would you want a film reviewer to be any other way? But even I was beginning to wonder if I would find a movie I really liked again.

It seems most of what Hollywood has shoved at us this year has pretty much been crap.

Well, the era of crap is officially over. “The Truman Show” is one of the most amazingly original movies I have ever seen. I’ll make this as simple as I can: Go out and see this movie.

The film stars Jim Carrey as the title character, Truman Burbank. Unknown to Truman, his entire life has been the subject of a 24 hour-a-day live television show watched by billions around the world.

I’ve talked to many people (well, women) who hate Carrey and don’t want to see this movie because he’s in it.

Don’t let that stop you. This is a Carrey we’ve never seen before. Here, he actually acts.

Truman never talks out of his butt. There’s none of that over-the-top, manic, face-stretching insanity a la “Ace Ventura” or “Liar Liar.”

Truman lives his entire life in an idyllic little seaside town. In reality, the town is built inside a huge soundstage, only the second man-made structure visible from space.

All the people in his life are actors portraying characters. Nobody is real, except for Truman.

Everything is scripted by the show’s creator, Christof, played by Ed Harris. Truman’s wife, his mother and his best friend are all actors hired to play the role of wife, mother and best friend. Only Truman himself is real.

Slowly, he begins to figure this out. A big part of the fun is the extent all the people of the town will go to in order to keep Truman from discovering the truth.

In school, when Truman expresses the desire to be a world explorer, his teacher points to the map of the world and explains there is nothing new to find.

When Truman heads to the travel agent to buy a ticket to Fiji, there is a poster on the wall of lightning striking a plane with the caption “It could happen to you.”

It gets harsher than that, too. Truman’s father is killed off in a boating accident so Truman will have a fear of crossing the water. The town is on a small island, which handily makes Truman a prisoner there.

A particularly clever bit of satire comes in the way products are advertised on “The Truman Show.” After all, this is live, 24-7 with no commercial breaks.

To get around this, characters will just work testimonials about cocoa or beer or a cheese slicer into their everyday conversations.

In this day when companies pay big bucks to get their products into a movie, I found this to be very amusing.

“The Truman Show” is not only a comedy, but also it has a more serious side. It brings to light issues like the intrusion of the media into our lives and the voyeuristic tendencies we all possess.

Basically, I have nothing bad to say about this movie. Even my favorite complaint, lack of character development, doesn’t apply here.

Sure, other than Truman, most of the other people in the movie are two dimensional and cardboard.

But they’re supposed to be like that. After all, they are playing actors playing characters on television. So they aren’t supposed to be well developed.

“The Truman Show” also scores points for the way it ends. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but I’ll just say it’s not your typical feel good, let’s-tie-up-all-the-loose-ends-nicely Hollywood kind of thing.

To sum it up, “The Truman Show” is clever, funny and unique.

It’s kind of disturbing, too, because the movie turns us, the audience, into watchers of the show, making us responsible for keeping Truman a prisoner.

Trust me, you’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Besides, I never like anything, right? And I loved this movie.

5 stars out of five

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.