It is pretty ballsy to make a vanilla Steve Jobs biopic, I guess. And this is very much a middle of the road film based around a meteoric man. I imagine it is somewhat of a triumph for star Ashton Kutcher, who does a surprisingly serviceable job playing the Apple maverick while never quite disappearing into the role. But that will be the only time I use the word “triumph” to describe Jobs.
I should take a step back from the snark to say that Jobs really isn’t a terrible movie. The subject matter is inherently interesting, which is why a movie was made in the first place (besides gettin’ that cash), and why I chose to take the opportunity to see and review it. I’m fascinated by Steve Jobs. Regardless of what your opinion is about Steve Jobs as a human/innovator/corporate icon, you almost certainly DO have an opinion about him. The guy was a line in the sand. Also regardless of your opinion about him, you can’t really deny that he changed the world with Apple and his devices and corporate vision.
So you have a subject in your biopic that is a divisive landmark with international recognition. His recent, “too soon” death ensures that Steve Jobs exited at the top of his game and that he will almost certainly transcend into legendary status. Then why do you choose to tell your story using the Biopic 101 manual? First time screenwriter Matt Whiteley didn’t have the easiest job in the world here, but that doesn’t change that he took the wrong track. There is a scattershot approach to Jobs that pays lip service to his issues with being adopted, his own jerky parenting decisions, and a fairly awful bookending device centered around the iPod. These unfocused elements are probably the worst aspects of the film in that they clutter up the overall flow and don’t really offer dimension or drama. I could see a filmmaker adding in an adoption angle to make viewers feel sympathetic for Jobs, and on the flip side showing him be a terrible father ensures that the movie isn’t revering it’s subject too much. But rather than adding dimensionality to Steve Jobs, these just feel like underdeveloped and poorly realized moments that pull away from the main dramatic arc of Jobs.
And that main dramatic arc is problematic.
While watching Jobs, I’d be surprised if you could escape the long shadow that The Social Network casts over this film. The young upstart with a potentially unlikable personality who founds a world-altering tech company that is fresh and exciting and may have tons of ethical quandaries lurking beneath the surface and definitely has innumerable board room sequences. That sentence equally describes both The Social Network and Jobs. But one succeeded beyond my wildest dreams and the other is merely a functional biopic.
Sure, Jobs’ screenplay comes from first time writer Matt Whiteley and The Social Network was written by the now legendary Aaron Sorkin. And Jobs director Joshua Michael Stern’s biggest directing gig before this film would be Kevin Costner’s Swing Vote, while Network’s David Fincher is perhaps one of the greatest living directors. So maybe the comparison isn’t fair. But man, could the makers of Jobs have learned a few things from The Social Network’s team.
The narrative arc of Jobs is, without question, Steve Jobs’ founding of Apple with Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad in a solid performance), the rise of the company, his ousting by the Apple Board of Directors, and then his triumphant return. That is a whole lot of board room meetings and corporate BS to sift through if you want your story to be compelling. And the music choices and editing and shooting all told me I was supposed to be FEELING things that I wasn’t feeling while I watched Jobs.
Whereas the makers of The Social Network realized they had a story on their hands that was going to involve a lot of computer monitors and board rooms and did everything they could to inject the rest of the film with life, potency, ideas, and drama… the Jobs team seems to have just embraced the drama of a corporate boardroom that 90% of it’s audience will never see or experience. Jobs is about corporate maneuverings and power plays far more than it is about Jobs’ vision for the company, which is what I find most compelling.
The version of Jobs that I would have loved to see, and the stuff in the actual film that I was most engaged by, was seeing Steve Jobs in the trenches at Apple leading the vision behind the doomed “Lisa” program and subsequent “Macintosh” development. I was engaged watching a dude and his team of nerds create a now totally outdated product. Why? Because the drama comes from Jobs’ relentless and unique vision and drive for excellence. I think a better film would have focused exclusively on the development of the Mac, or even the iPod, and letting the shades of the subject’s famously prickly personality shine through as he worked on something undeniably great. An excellent screenwriter could bring out the drama, the cultural themes, and the inspiration from a focused story like that and really make something special.
Jobs is scattershot, mistakenly focused on an un-relatable board room struggle, and filled with loose ends. The performances in the film are solid and one can’t help but enjoy peeking behind the curtain into a well-realized recreation of ‘80s-era Atari and Apple headquarters. But Jobs never reaches the level of drama or inspiration that it’s music cues, writing and direction tell you you are supposed to be feeling.
And I’m Out.