The Beatles’ Doomed Manager Needs a Great Biopic. ‘Midas Man’ Isn’t it

If any backstage pop institution deserves a biopic of his or her own, it would be Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ tragic manager, champion, and supporter through rough and giddy times alike. Epstein has been portrayed here and there in films, but Midas Man (available on streaming services starting today) is the first full feature devoted to him. According to a report in Variety, the making of the film was fraught, encompassing multiple directors, distribution issues and a bigger budget than expected. But in light of music biopic mania and the ongoing fascination with his former clients, the belated timing couldn’t be better, which only makes it a shame that the film is largely a competent but uninspiring telling of his tale.

As subjects for biopic treatment go, Epstein’s life is, of course, a natural. The story of a gay, Jewish record-store manager who stumbles upon the young Beatles at the Cavern Club and soon becomes their overseer, while battling his own insecurities and demons before dying of an accidental overdose at 32, was born to be a movie. With Jacob Fortune-Lloyd in the lead role, Midas Man checks off all the appropriate boxes in recreating Epstein’s life. We see his amazement during that first sighting at the Cavern Club, his tentative initial meeting with the band in their dressing room, the one-after-another meetings in which clueless British label heads turned down the Beatles, and Epstein’s wheeling and dealing, including a recreation of his meeting with Ed Sullivan (Jay Leno, who makes the TV host seem like a surly mobster).

For newcomers to the Beatles, the story — especially the way Epstein lived in fear of society’s (and his family)’s disapproval over his gay lifestyle — will surely be eye-opening given these every different and more enlightened times. Although he resembles a middle-aged Harry Styles more than he does Epstein, Fortune-Lloyd captures the mix of prim determination and repressed pain in Epstein’s demeanor. The movie doesn’t mention the trip that Epstein and John Lennon took to Spain in 1963, which resulted in rumors about a possible sexual encounter between the two. But Midas Man does touch upon the tension between the two, and it doesn’t shy away from Epstein’s growing addiction to pills, his back-alley sexual encounters, and at least one case of blackmail that resulted from them.

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For Beatlemaniacs, though, little if any of this will be breaking news, and the film’s often dreary look (and the absence of any Beatles music, since the producers weren’t able to get those rights) hobble Midas Man as much as its decline-by-numbers narrative. The actors who portray the Beatles aren’t given much to do other than make cheeky remarks to him. (Amusingly, Epstein’s father is played by Eddie Marsan, who played Amy Winehouse’s long-suffering dad in Back to Black — talk about typecasting.) A few fresh angles — like the moments Epstein breaks the fourth wall and addresses us directly on the plot — can’t quite compensate for the movie’s conventionality. Midas Man gently weeps for Epstein, and rightly so, but leaves his story largely earthbound.