This biopic of Beatles manager Brian Epstein is yet another moderately good film from the Beatles Cinematic Universe – see also Nowhere Boy and Backbeat. And it’s one best appreciated by those with a healthy level of Fab Four fan appreciation. It does deserve a bouquet for merely existing. As well as emerging from a reportedly troubled production, it’s got to the screen after many other Epstein projects with big names attached – Benedict Cumberbatch was to have played the lead in one – have fallen by the wayside.
Epstein’s life offers a movie-friendly arc – between meeting The Beatles in 1961 and his death from an accidental overdose in 1967 at the age of 32 ‒ he changed pop culture forever. Plus, he was young, handsome, Jewish, gay, drug-dependent, tortured, well off and well spoken.
So, a character offering plenty for a Cumberbatch to get self-conflicted about. It’s quite the story of how Epstein found The Beatles, fresh-faced but Hamburg-honed, put them in suits and sold them to the one London record label that would have them, then the world.
That’s all here in a buoyant affair starring Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (The Queen’s Gambit) as Epstein. He’s not much of a resemblance but he’s watchable in a film that requires of him only energy, elocution and angst as the public demands of Beatlemania and Epstein’s closeted private life make him cope increasingly pharmaceutically.
It all comes with sprightliness, Epstein breaking the fourth wall with explanations, and montages to cover the more complicated bits. These can feel more like the broad melodramatic strokes of an upbeat musical – Mersey Boys? – than a tragedy. So do curious touches such as an Eddie Izzard cameo as the band’s earlier, glad-to-be-rid-of-them manager, and Jay Leno as American showbiz don Ed Sullivan.
The Beatles cast looks the part, though John Lennon (Jonah Lees) seems to have shrunk. And Eddie Marsan and Emily Watson are solid as Epstein’s protective parents.
Even without any Beatles-written songs – amusingly, we get the La Marseillaise intro to All You Need is Love but no more – it recreates some memorable moments, such as Epstein’s first visit to The Cavern to hear the local band his record shop customers are buzzing about. It’s easy to get swept along in Epstein’s rise to the toppermost of the poppermost, but his slide down the other side is where Midas Man also unravels. It’s happy to relive his legend without offering any real depth of character.
Rating out of five: ★★★½
Midas Man, directed by Joe Stephenson, is in cinemas now.
