What a pathetic state of affairs. Barely a month into blockbuster season, audiences have already begun kicking over mega-budget studio tent poles left and right.* Good. All the more opportunity to discover films like Ned Crowley's delightfully ghoulish Middle Man. Accountant Lenny Freeman (Jim O'Heir) quits his day job to pursue stand-up comedy. While driving to Las Vegas for a TV talent show audition, he picks up a charismatic and very talkative young hitchhiker (Andrew J. West), who's also a serial killer (natch). Turns out Lenny is a few punch lines short of a set himself, and Middle Man slowly transforms from charming-yet-predictable road movie into a genre-junking blend of The King of Comedy and The Hitcher. If imagination, talent, and passion were currency, Crowley's crowd-funded assemblage of revelatory performances and memorable dialogue would get the Transformers 5 treatment.
Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #229, to hear Middle Man star Jim O'Heir and writer/director Ned Crowley tell Ian where the bodies are buried!
*For every Wonder Woman, a Baywatch drowns just off the coastline.