`EDTV' LEAVES YOU LONGING FOR SOMETHING DEEPER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``EDtv'' comes in the wake of two exceptionally fine and perceptive television satires, ``Pleasantville'' and ``The Truman Show.'' Directed by Ron Howard and written by the tube-trained team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (``Happy Days,'' ``City Slickers,'' Howard's ``Parenthood''), the well-acted ``ED'' is the most conventional of the three and, in some ways, the easiest to enjoy.

But almost inevitably, as ``ED'' unfolds in its amusing, mildly critical way, you keep longing for something sharper, deeper and more absorbing to hit the screen - even though you know that, with these guys at the controls, that's never going to pop up on this particular channel.

Though very similar to ``Truman'' premise-wise, ``ED'' goes for an illusion of realism rather than allegorical fantasy. It's set right now, in a real place (San Francisco) and boasts a self-aware camera subject (depending on your definition of self-awareness).

Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey, well-cast and working hard) is a likably useless, 30ish guy with nothing particularly going on in his life. As his more ambitious but equally unsuccessful brother Ray (Woody Harrelson) notes, Ed's job at a video store is the kind of minimum-wage work most people grow out of, not into.

But then Ed is chosen as the subject of a ratings-starved cable network's desperate venture: 24-hour continuous coverage of one guy's life. Within days, Ed's a sensation. People can't get enough of his down-home charm (his family hails from Texas) and, um, willingness to share such peculiar intimacies as his toenail-clipping techniques. And then things really get interesting.

Ed catches Ray - and so, of course, does the live camera crew that follows him everywhere - with a one-night stand and, when trying to comfort Ray's betrayed girlfriend, Shari (``Dharma & Greg's'' Jenna Elfman, touching and true in the film's most emotionally demanding role), ends up kissing her on national television instead. The republic swoons, but soon cries for sudsier complications.

Majorities of USA Today poll respondents quickly tire of Shari and want to see Ed date a sexy English trollop (who else but Elizabeth Hurley). Ancient, embarrassing secrets about Ed's mom (Sally Kirkland) and disabled stepdad (Martin Landau, giving the film's deftest comic performance) are dredged up, as is Ed's long missing-in-action bum of a biological father (Dennis Hopper).

Inevitably, Ed stops enjoying celebrity and realizes that the media overkill is not only messing up his life, but the lives of everyone he cares about, too. This leads to a predictable showdown with evil network executive Rob Reiner, whose portrayal of arrogant media amorality is dead-on perfect.

Naturally, Ed becomes a heroic crusader against runaway privacy invasion deserving of a presidential medal of honor - or, at least, a President Clinton medal. It's crowd-pleasing, but in fact the film is more interesting during the few scenes in which Ed himself tries to stage-manage others' emotions into ``better'' TV - or when Ellen DeGeneres, as the show's ambitious but sympathetic producer, manipulates Ed into living his life more dramatically.

These moments touch upon a more complex idea of how show biz twists everything, but it's never developed to a really challenging degree. The real commercial corruption here lies in the movie's state-of-the-art overload of product placements. I suppose Howard could claim that he was making a comment about how everything is sponsored in the TV age. But he sure sold a lot of advertising space in the process.

Howard never has been the kind of filmmaker critics consider personal. If you can find confessional or obsessional links between such slick and varied products as ``Splash,'' ``Parenthood,'' ``Cocoon,'' ``Ransom'' and ``Apollo 13,'' you have a Film Comment article.

But ``EDtv'' obviously speaks to Howard's experience as a child actor, and the film's most persuasive moments are those in which Ed weighs the pluses and minuses of his fishbowl existence. It's not exactly profound, but compared to how feelings are packaged in most of Howard's cinema, it's unusually engrossing.

THE FACTS

The film: ``EDtv'' (PG-13; language).

The stars: Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Reiner, Sally Kirkland, Martin Landau, Elizabeth Hurley, Dennis Hopper.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Ron Howard. Written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Produced by Brian Grazer and Howard. Released by Universal Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, three minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars.