Sundance 2013: jOBS reaction
Apple-man biopic is merely all-white...
It’s the closing film of Sundance 2013 and one of the most anticipated. But the question is, is jOBS a good ‘un?
Although not the big-screen spinning pizza wheel of death some early reports suggested, this biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs could do with a few upgrades.
If you’re expecting another Social Network , prepare for disappointment. Right off the bat it’s clear we’re in for something less cutting and more cloying than the Facebook movie, with an opener that sees the middle-aged Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) in 2001 presenting a new gizmo called the iPod to rapt employees.
Cue surging strings and cheesy reaction shots - both of which will recur again and again as the movie rewinds to the mid-'70s to reveal how Jobs set out to change the world via blocky personal computers.
To their credit, the filmmakers don’t shy from showing us their hero’s darker side: friends, colleagues and pregnant girlfriends all suffer off-hand treatment as Steve strives for greatness.
Yet this is at heart a reverential portrait, executed in a no-frills style that’s user-friendly on the one hand (breezy pace, not too much techy jargon), overly functional on the other (on-the-nose dialogue like “I can’t work for anyone else. I need to be independent!”; “You’re either with me or against me”;“Apple… like the fruit?”)
As for Kutcher, he’s clearly done his homework: imitating Jobs’ hand gestures and loping gait with Day-Lewis-like dedication, he truly walks the walk. But when it comes to talking the talk, he doesn’t quite bring the dramatic chops required.
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It’s one thing for the film to tell us what a brilliant, innovative, risk-taking visionary Jobs was - but only now and then does Kutcher really show us.