‘Midas Man’ review: the man who made The Beatles deserves better than this

This biopic of The Beatles‘ manager Brian Epstein ends with a famous quote from Paul McCartney: “If anyone was the fifth Beatle, it was Brian.” It’s both the raison d’être for this moderately entertaining but hollow film and, perhaps, the reason for its downfall. Midas Man is so busy hitting the familiar beats of the Fab Four’s incredible rise that it never really burrows beneath Epstein’s skin.

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We meet Epstein (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) as he persuades his businessman dad Harry (Eddie Marsan) to let him stock pop records at the family’s Liverpool furniture store. Epstein’s ear for the latest sounds leads him to the now-iconic Cavern Club, where a red-headed attendant who will become Cilla Black (Darci Shaw) checks in his coat and he watches a ragtag quartet called The Beatles thrill a youthful lunchtime crowd.

Quick-witted band members Paul McCartney (Blake Richardson), John Lennon (Jonah Lees) and George Harrison (Leo Harvey-Elledge, who recently played Liam Gallagher in Creation Stories) are impressed by Epstein’s sales pitch to them, but also mock his plummy public school accent. Still, Epstein’s smooth manners enable him to usurp the band’s existing manager Allan Williams (a nice cameo from Eddie Suzy Izzard) and eventually bag them a record deal. Soon after, lumpen original drummer Pete Best (Adam Lawrence) is replaced by the snappier Ringo Starr (Campbell Wallace) and we all know what happens next.

As the Beatles’ popularity explodes, Midas Man follows Epstein and the band to America while paying lip service to other Merseybeat acts he managed, most notably Gerry And The Pacemakers. Director Joe Stephenson steers the story with brisk efficiency – no small feat given this film’s bumpy production. Shooting took place in fits and starts across nearly two years following the departure of two previous directors, Jonas Åkerlund and Sara Sugarman.

Midas Man pulls off an amusingly meta coup when ’90s chat show host Jay Leno pops up to play ’60s chat show host Ed Sullivan, the man who gave The Beatles their first US TV slot. Other moments aren’t as smart. The screenplay by first-time feature writer Brigit Grant tries to highlight the culture clash between Esptein and Sullivan by showing the Brit awkwardly eating a giant New York hamburger with a knife and fork. It’s not the only stale moment either.

The film’s depiction of Epstein’s sexuality is equally clumsy. Instead of drilling into his deep-rooted internalised homophobia, which was understandable given that gay sex was only decriminalised in England in 1967, the year of his death, it invents an unconvincing fictional relationship with a two-dimensional American actor. When Tex Ellington (Ed Speleers) deserts Epstein after stealing from him, it feels like a crass plot device to highlight the manager’s loneliness and sense of isolation.

The result is passable retro fodder with a glaring hole: a lack of Beatles songs. Presumably because these were impossible or too expensive to wrangle, we have to make do with snippets of Black’s biggest hits and the Fab Four covering Barrett Strong’s ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’. John, Paul, George and Ringo did indeed record the soulful rocker in 1963, but it’s hardly in their top-tier. Midas Man has some empathy for its subject and a warm performance from Emily Watson as his mother Queenie, but no real curiosity about what made him tick. For this reason, it ultimately does a disservice to both Epstein the manager and Epstein the man.

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