EDtv (1999)

Ron Howard is proof that you can take the boy out of television, but you can't take television...etc. The director of ''The Paper,'' ''Apollo 13,'' and ''Ransom'' makes enthusiastically proficient middle-of-the-road entertainments with soft, bland centers. He may, on occasion, tackle audacious subjects, but he never risks stirring you up. Geniality is his religion; the desire to stroke the audience, to make it feel comfortable and not too taxed, is wired into his nervous system.

''EDtv,'' Howard's latest clever-concept production, looks, for a while, like it might shake free of the director's usual Velveeta patness, if only because the movie itself comes on as a hip, knowing satire of the packaged omnivorousness of contempo TV culture. The central character, Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey), is an amiably serene, aw-shucks rube who is plucked from obscurity by a fledgling cable channel called True TV and made the star of his own round-the-clock, this-is-my- private-reality show, a kind of marathon solo version of ''The Real World'' or ''An American Family.'' A feverish cluster of cameramen track Ed's every move, from bed to bathroom to work to dance club to bed again, and his most intimate encounters are broadcast, right as they happen, into the living rooms of America.

The station executives want drama, damn it. They get it, of course. Ed has a crush on Shari (Jenna Elfman), the girlfriend of his older brother, Ray (Woody Harrelson), a charmingly blustery happy-hour rogue. One night, Ed knocks on Ray's door, and the camera crew inadvertently reveals the curvy specimen Ray has just picked up and bedded. That's enough to send Shari scurrying into Ed's all-too-willing arms. They kiss, tenderly, right on camera. Big drama! Applause in all the living rooms! With the romantic clinch broadcast live, Ray, of course, now knows about the relationship. More drama! Then Ed, in the midst of a visit with his mom (Sally Kirkland) and weary, wheelchair-bound stepdad (Martin Landau), learns the truth about his real dad. So much drama!

But is it, really? In ''EDtv,'' Ed's existence turns out to be a series of cute, tidy episodes that play as if they'd already been scripted for a television show. His life is a glorified season of ''Friends.'' Had Howard built this irony directly into the movie, it might have resulted in a juicy pop-culture jape. But Howard wants us to take the clichés of Ed's life perfectly straight. As a fable of instantaneous televisual fame, ''EDtv'' is lively yet obvious.

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