Review: Middle Men
I rarely think of myself as a techie geek -- I don't feel knowledgable enough about programming to quality. I'm not normally an early adopter. I don't have Linux installed on any of my computers ... okay, except for the household media computer and my husband did that. The point is, I'm as surprised as anyone that I felt Middle Men didn't deliver enough techie storyline, instead relying on mundane plot elements like kidnapping, wild Vegas escapades, drug-addled geniuses and Mob-owned strip clubs. Maybe the trailer was trying to invoke the same vibe as The Social Network to draw in the geeks, who might be fascinated by a story of bizarre Internet success based on real life ... but I felt misled and disappointed.
Middle Men is about a trio of gentlemen who more or less accidentally jump-start the online porn industry in the late 1990s by creating billing services for websites. Wayne (Giovanni Ribisi) and Buck (Gabriel Macht) stumble upon the idea late one night, Buck bangs out some code, and the money starts rolling in at a surprising rate. But they handle everything terribly, and eventually Jack Harris (Luke Wilson), a guy from Houston who helps people negotiate and fix things, straightens out their biggest difficulties and sees the potential for a multimillion dollar business. Unfortunately, Buck and Wayne still drag trouble behind them wherever they go, and in the meantime, Jack feels torn between his family living in Houston and his new Los Angeles lifestyle.
The movie doesn't introduce the plot as smoothly as I just described it. the opening scene is set in 2004, but then the action flashes back to 1988, then 1997, then earlier in 1997 ... I think. I wasn't actually confused but I did feel slightly disoriented, especially because I'm not sure we needed all of that background. Luke Wilson's character narrates the film in an oddly nasal voice that sounds like he's trying to channel Christian Slater. Unfortunately, the bad narration is the one thing holding the story together at times -- it feels like a movie with structural problems that were solved in the editing room by the narration.
One problem is that Buck and Wayne are more irritating than interesting. We're supposed to empathize with Jack, but it takes awhile for the movie to focus on him and by the time it truly becomes his story, his character becomes less interesting. Luke Wilson's character is supposed to be a kind of Everyman, who dives into a sleazy part of society and has to decide how it will change him, but we don't really see much change and frankly, he's such a nonentity onscreen that it's hard to care.
Giovanni Ribisi plays Wayne in a grating, one-note way, like he's auditioning for a roadshow production of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I had to wonder exactly why this character is even in the movie -- he adds very little to the actual business and is almost painful to watch at times. James Caan is barely recognizable as a shady lawyer who can't be kept out of the action.
Worst of all is Jacinda Barrett as Jack's wife Diana (geez, why not just call her Diane and go Full Heartland Stereotype?). Admittedly she's stuck in one of those thankless The Wife roles, but her "Texas" accent is so terrible, and her general line delivery so off-key, that every scene she's in falls flat and dies.
However, Middle Men has some wonderful moments with actors who spend far too little time in the movie. Robert Forster appears for a couple of minutes in a flashback and my notes read "Noooo! Bring him back!" Kelsey Grammar might not have a Houston accent quite down pat but his scene as a district attorney is still one of the film's bright spots. And when Kevin Pollak shows up more than halfway through the film, he puts the other actors in his scenes to shame.
Middle Men is the kind of movie that makes me sad, because somewhere in the mess of structure and bad direction and underperformed acting, I can see potential for a wild and witty comedy about these guys. It's just plain badly made -- shoddy goods, a pale shadow of something that in other hands, could have been top quality. Director/co-writer George Gallo (who wrote Code Name: The Cleaner, a comedy with exactly 2 funny minutes in it) doesn't seem to have the hang of directing, and the script lacks the sharp wit and cleverness that would make this movie successful.
Seeing Luke Wilson and James Caan together kept reminding me of Bottle Rocket, a funnier movie where they both played better-written characters. Seeing Wilson with Terry Crews reminded me of Idiocracy, another movie that wasn't quite what it could have been, but was at least more lively and entertaining.
At one point, Wilson's character notes in narration that the code Buck wrote is still being used in online transactions everywhere, by companies like Amazon. Porn technology is so often cutting-edge; what adult sites do today is what mainstream sites do tomorrow. To me, watching how that works would be way more interesting than watching a couple of cokeheads try to fight the Russian Mob and sleazy lawyers. Yep, I guess I am a geek after all.