Review of Middle Men (2009) by Kevin L — 09 Mar 2011

The Social Network for dumb people. I thought I would be clever in maybe comparing this "inspired by true events story" to another popular one, but it seems everyone already has. But whereas Network used some smart dialogue and sophisticated stuff, Middle Men uses a lot of rudimentary stuff including nudity, pace, and choppy editing.

From the start, the movie jumps around. It's just not a style I prefer though it works well enough. Like Social Network, it is hard if not impossible to tell exactly what is based on fact and what is dramaticized for entertainment. Also not my favorite. I'm sure the original story was plenty entertaining, so why muddy it up beyond recognition? Other than that, it's a pretty fantastic story as told in the movie. I have to think quite a bit of liberty was taken in telling the story.

Welll, it's about porn, so about that... the movie features lots of tits. Fake ones. The ones I really wanted to see were those belonging to Ms. Laura Ramsey, who played probably the main porn girl in the movie. Oddly enough, and much to her credit, Ramsey does not give up the goods. Still, very unfortunate in a movie where everyone else does.

What they did show, and show a lot, were sunglasses. More than the Escalade that was evidently introduced in 1997 (I'm not fact-checking this but it did seem out of place), and a few other things that were either out of place or lacked reasonable continuity, the glasses were quite distracting. Several of the main characters wore them, and they were all ostentatious and bizarre. Not something I'd expect rational or rich people to wear (the big is expected but not the ugly).

Anyway, some entertaining parts but I was hoping for some real facts.