The festival is winding down, and for our penultimate screening we find ourselves returning to the Uptown for the world premiere of Middle Man, starring Jim O’Heir. Mr. O’Heir was in attendance, along with writer-director Ned Crowley, and actors Anne Dudek and Andrew J. West (they brought gifts for the audience!). The framework for the story is a familiar one, this time involving a CPA who decides to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian and the mysterious hitchhiker he picks up on the way to Las Vegas. They get stuck in a kind of time warp, like those dreams where you’re running but don’t actually get anywhere. They are so close to Vegas, but can’t seem to get out of a town called Lamb Bone and its quirky residents. A black comedy, there are some moments of gore. My favorite character turned out to be the troubadour TQ, who sang a song and dressed a bit like Chris Isaak.

This film fails the Bechdel Test. And while I don’t know that it would have benefited from passing, it does have the overall feeling of a dude pic, even if those dudes are middle-aged (or older?). The few women there are in the film, however, are pretty much treated the same as the men, so there is that. No spoilers!