Review – Jobs

The huge media huge reaction to the death of Steve Jobs meant a biopic would inevitably make its way into cinemas, and rumours have long since circulated of rival studios working on different Jobs movies. But first-time screenwriter Matt Whiteley was the first to complete a shooting script, having started on it when Jobs was merely sick. The subsequent picture Jobs, however, has the vibe of a rushed effort.

Ashton Kutcher successfully carries the film with his lead performance, reproducing the idiosyncratic walk and speech affectations of the real Steve Jobs, but with Whiteley’s script he’s prone to repeating almost every conceivable Jobs quote. From the perspective of a biopic, it’s disappointing: we get the highlights reel of Jobs stories rather than a deep sense of the character behind them. And despite the name, this movie mostly tells the story of Apple, glossing over huge segments in the Jobs biography (such as his twenty year involvement with Pixar, for instance). The heavy drama is mostly limited to the offices and boardrooms of Apple Inc., and company personalities are wedged into the story for little purpose (Giles Matthey, for example, is given almost nothing to do as Jonathon Ive). In fairness, though, we are treated to some lovely scenes, in the first act, of Jobs and Steve Wozniak working together as a basement start-up.

The lack of coherence to this film is most obvious in the opening and ending scenes. When we first meet Steve Jobs it’s him as of 2001, at the height of his powers, while he’s introducing the world to the iPod. But we never return there; when the credits come down it’s still 1996, and we’re told in a fadeout that Apple become the world’s largest corporation in 2012. Even James Cameron knows your narrative should always come full-circle. But for all that Jobs was engaging enough that it left me wanting more, and if it makes for an imperfect biopic, it still works very well as entertaining cinema.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAJQ7bKDDU&w=400]