You know when you find a really, really awesome beer, the kind that you can taste and then drink and have the after-taste that is just succulent and wonderful and all around is at least never disappointing every time you drink it? That's Martin Scorsese with his crime films, specifically GoodFellas and Casino. I mention this in part since comparing Scorsese to beer is fun, but also because of the critics who have compared Middle Men, George Gallo's latest, to those films (Boogie Nights also comes up due to the porn connection, but Scorsese, who influenced Gallo to become a director with Mean Streets, is a better one to note for some reasons). So just to start off, what Scorsese's crime films, loaded with their incredibly smart storytelling and character development, their uniquely artistic style and the sweet taste in music and narration, is a very fine brand... Middle Men is Coors Light.
It's the tale of the start of porn on the internet, the knuckleheads who got together and made it happen just by proxy of wanting to get naked women on-line and get paid for it, and the 'normal' guy, the average Joe, who made it happen as a legitimate enterprise. It's told like the tale of a saga of crime, a "rise n fall" story akin to Casino (the glamor, the intoxication of power and the corruption of violence and money and sex and drugs and so on), but far from it exactly. We get the eccentric and outrageous characters, the "raw" language, the rough bad- guys, the good people sort of left by the wayside, and the corruption.
But really, what sets apart Middle Men from anything remotely Scorsese is simply this: it's a knock-off. And that, from the looks of the director/co-writer's career, George Gallo, he's not exactly been the "artist" that someone of Scorsese or PT Anderson's caliber, ever really. It so desperately tries, and what Gallo does is take what is a very interesting idea for a story, of the business side of porn on the internet, and only makes it intermittently interesting in the way it's about it. For example, more than halfway into the film we see the FBI is following Luke Wilson's character, and he gets panicked, until he finds out why they're following him: his porn-star "girlfriend", Audrey Dawns, is a HUGE star with the terrorists overseas, and she becomes an asset to them. This is an awesome plot point that, in the grand scheme of things, is just meant as a joke instead of something meatier or more worthwhile.
Gallo does get one thing right, somewhat, which is in casting (some) of the parts. When Luke Wilson is given something good to do in a scene, he can really go with it, and I liked seeing him in a lead role again... to an extent. Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht have some fun with their sleazy-cum-genius characters who invent this enterprise and squander it as low-rent would-be criminals paranoid on coke. James Caan is... James Caan, not too much else there. Terry Crews is sadly underused, as someone who needs to get juicier roles. Kevin Pollock and Kelsey Grammar get some decent walk-ons.
Ultimately, it's not even the direction, at least not that much, that gets the film down, though there is an over-reliance on a soundtrack that intermittently works for the story and the rest of the time is flash in the pan. It's the screenplay. It's specifically the narration. Who was Gallo kidding with this stuff? Wilson's Jack Harris keeps talking not in a voice that reveals something about his character or attitude, no, he just keeps going around talking about what will happen or how he feels, simple s*** that would get him nailed to wall, eviscerated, in a freshman screen writing class much less a Hollywood movie. It was painful to hear this stuff, and not even always cause Wilson spoke it badly, just that it intrudes on scenes that are already conventional enough with the dialog. This narration sunk the film down to a level of amateurishness when it should have been able to stick with its images, its characters speaking for themselves, the story going without having to double-back. It ultimately is insulting to the audience that it's marketed to.
A shame, since there is good stuff here. Middle Men strives to be some kind of new classic in the mold of a Scorsese crime epic about appealing low-lifes, but the passion and raw energy is lacking, for one, and a general sense of excitement is missing on the other. Even scenes that *should* raise hairs do little but rouse a little interest (save for Terry Crews or Ribisi since they go over the top), and it rolls along to its next predictable moment. It's a mediocre turn at an interesting idea.
It's the tale of the start of porn on the internet, the knuckleheads who got together and made it happen just by proxy of wanting to get naked women on-line and get paid for it, and the 'normal' guy, the average Joe, who made it happen as a legitimate enterprise. It's told like the tale of a saga of crime, a "rise n fall" story akin to Casino (the glamor, the intoxication of power and the corruption of violence and money and sex and drugs and so on), but far from it exactly. We get the eccentric and outrageous characters, the "raw" language, the rough bad- guys, the good people sort of left by the wayside, and the corruption.
But really, what sets apart Middle Men from anything remotely Scorsese is simply this: it's a knock-off. And that, from the looks of the director/co-writer's career, George Gallo, he's not exactly been the "artist" that someone of Scorsese or PT Anderson's caliber, ever really. It so desperately tries, and what Gallo does is take what is a very interesting idea for a story, of the business side of porn on the internet, and only makes it intermittently interesting in the way it's about it. For example, more than halfway into the film we see the FBI is following Luke Wilson's character, and he gets panicked, until he finds out why they're following him: his porn-star "girlfriend", Audrey Dawns, is a HUGE star with the terrorists overseas, and she becomes an asset to them. This is an awesome plot point that, in the grand scheme of things, is just meant as a joke instead of something meatier or more worthwhile.
Gallo does get one thing right, somewhat, which is in casting (some) of the parts. When Luke Wilson is given something good to do in a scene, he can really go with it, and I liked seeing him in a lead role again... to an extent. Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht have some fun with their sleazy-cum-genius characters who invent this enterprise and squander it as low-rent would-be criminals paranoid on coke. James Caan is... James Caan, not too much else there. Terry Crews is sadly underused, as someone who needs to get juicier roles. Kevin Pollock and Kelsey Grammar get some decent walk-ons.
Ultimately, it's not even the direction, at least not that much, that gets the film down, though there is an over-reliance on a soundtrack that intermittently works for the story and the rest of the time is flash in the pan. It's the screenplay. It's specifically the narration. Who was Gallo kidding with this stuff? Wilson's Jack Harris keeps talking not in a voice that reveals something about his character or attitude, no, he just keeps going around talking about what will happen or how he feels, simple s*** that would get him nailed to wall, eviscerated, in a freshman screen writing class much less a Hollywood movie. It was painful to hear this stuff, and not even always cause Wilson spoke it badly, just that it intrudes on scenes that are already conventional enough with the dialog. This narration sunk the film down to a level of amateurishness when it should have been able to stick with its images, its characters speaking for themselves, the story going without having to double-back. It ultimately is insulting to the audience that it's marketed to.
A shame, since there is good stuff here. Middle Men strives to be some kind of new classic in the mold of a Scorsese crime epic about appealing low-lifes, but the passion and raw energy is lacking, for one, and a general sense of excitement is missing on the other. Even scenes that *should* raise hairs do little but rouse a little interest (save for Terry Crews or Ribisi since they go over the top), and it rolls along to its next predictable moment. It's a mediocre turn at an interesting idea.