by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Eddie Marsan, Emily Watson, Ed Speleers, Eddie Izzard, Jay Leno
Intro:
… works well enough in its own terms as an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia and a (mildly) engaging and linear biopic.
Being the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein was of course a phenomenally successful and canny businessman. As is widely known, he was also a deeply troubled man who – like innumerable lesser-known people – suffered because of the prevalent homophobia in the England of the Sixties. These two facts form the core of Midas Man.
We follow the career trajectory of Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) from running a Liverpool record store to signing up the Beatles after seeing them play at The Cavern … Then there’s the move down to London … Beatlemania – and the rest is history. His life was eventful but tragically short – he died at 32 – and a great deal of information is put across via such time-saving devices as the use of split screens and the breaking down of the so-called fourth wall. (Brian talks to the camera intermittently.) It shouldn’t necessarily have worked but it does, more or less.
There are a few odd directorial and casting choices here. Jay Leno is Ed Sullivan: one TV host playing another. And the screen Beatles are remarkable only as lookalikes, while their dialogue consists almost entirely of the kind of cheeky chappie repartee which the real-life Fabs reserved for press conferences. But a rather effective counterpoint evolves from the contrast between the poppy positivity of it all and Epstein’s more downbeat life away from the public eye.
Midas Man has the look – and the colour palette – of a TV mini-series with a modest budget, rather than a big-screen movie. There are no original Beatles songs in it – only ones they covered – presumably because the filmmakers either couldn’t get or couldn’t afford the rights. And the scenes that deal with Epstein’s private anguish notwithstanding, it lacks a certain ‘oomph’ and momentum. But none of these limitations is critical, Fortune-Lloyd (The Queen’s Gambit) is good, and the whole thing works well enough in its own terms as an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia and a (mildly) engaging and linear biopic.
