Thursday, April 04, 2019

Middle Man (2016)

Lenny (Jim O'Heir), after the death of his mother, decides to go to Vegas to become a stand-up comedian. Except he's terribly unfunny. He meets a hitchhiker, who calls himself Hitch (Andrew West), who claims to have served as manager to stand-ups in the past. Being around Hitch results in lots of dead bodies. Lenny grows increasingly traumatized, but, as these things go in movies, this makes him a funnier comedian. The question is whether he can reclaim his old life, but keep the success he's found in this disaster.

I couldn't actually watch Lenny's unsuccessful stand-up routines. Watching (fictional) people literally die? No problem. Watching them metaphorically die? Apparently that's a bridge too far. The successful routines were easier to watch. I did laugh. He has this raspy whisper to his voice, this shell-shocked quality which is entirely understandable. But if you think he's making up this bit about how hard it is to get rid of a body, it would seem funny.

The whole scene where Lenny and Hitch try to dump the first corpse and keep running into complications was pretty funny, too. I especially liked the attempt to throw him in a dumpster.

That said, Hitch's backstory is all over the place. He was a manager, enough to have connections with the guy who runs the competition Lenny wants to enter, but he's a drifter? He owes money, and he's a psychopath? It's like his characteristics would work better split between two characters, but the plot wouldn't work that way, so they just crammed everything into one guy.

If you can roll with that, it's a funny dark comedy.

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