Movie Review: The Osborne Show

In an world addicted to contrived voyeuristic TV, ratings are dominated by the ultimate reality series – in which an innocent child unwittingly grows up surrounded by hidden cameras and millionaire actors who are only pretending to pay their taxes. Welcome, viewers, to The Osborne Show.

Lovable everyman George Osborne (played by rubber-faced goofball Jim Carrey) enjoys his job and likes everybody inside his artificial bubble until, on day 10919, a strange bundle of used tenners suddenly drops from the sky in front of him in an airmail package addressed to ‘The Cayman Islands’. Later, at his desk in the Treasury, an intrigued Osborne delves into the files – only to find that no such place appears to exist. However, when he checks the tax records, he is shocked to learn that neither he, his friends and family nor anyone else in his entire world has ever contributed a single penny to the economy.

His whole life has been a carefully-constructed illusion

Although the cynical executives who really run the show are initially alarmed, they quickly realise that the fickle viewing public will be easily distracted by Osborne’s emotional turmoil as he descends into fear and paranoia, driven to rebel against everything he has ever known and tormented by the gnawing suspicion that he may be the lifelong victim of a cruel deception.

The film succeeds because, from the very start, the audience knows what Osborne does not, seeing the scheming executives controlling everything for their own purposes, and longs for him to escape his comfortable bubble and break out into the real world.

Ironically, of course, it is only a fantasy. The Osborne Show ultimately fails to drive home the important issues it raises about wealth, the media and the rich men who control our lives, because the audience is too busy laughing to take it seriously.