Whether or not you have Apple products in your home, you can not deny that the company has had a huge impact on the world of computers, music, telephony and apps. In each of these markets it has managed to change the landscape or even create new ones, with others trying to get the same success. A driving force behind this has been Steve Jobs. With his death in 2011 many felt that an inspiring man had left us. Not knowing much about him I decided to read the biography written by Walter Isaacson. It turns out that he was a difficult person to deal with, someone who did things differently and would ignore specific things if they did not help him in some way. He also inspired and had ways to convince people to do things they might not think possible. He was a perfectionist and even cared about the look of circuitry (it needed to look clean) even if nobody ever got to see it. jOBS tries to do what The Social Network did for Mark Zuckerberg. Does it succeed in its goal?
The movie opens with Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) unveiling the iPod and then telling how Apple got to that point. That’s immediately the problem I had with the movie. It seems to focus more on the company than the man himself. Everything is shown from the viewpoint of Jobs, but not much of his personal life is shown. The fact that he had a daughter who he refused to see (and even denied being the father of) only is shown very shortly. When he is fired from Apple little to no time is spent on what this did to him. You shortly see that he has set up another company, but the movie quickly jumps back to Apple trying to get him back. This is only one example, but the movie did this several times. Because I had read the biography I could fill in a lot of the blanks but I did wonder how interesting the movie would be for those who don’t know much about Steve Jobs. I think they will probably won’t be able to get a clear image of him.
Ashton Kutcher has a striking similarity to Jobs in the movie and I have to say that I really enjoyed his performance. The rest of the cast is pretty solid as well, but as a whole the movie glances over a long life story resulting in a movie which lacks real impact on the viewer. It shows the waves of success Apple had because of Jobs, but not enough at the man himself which results in a movie where you just don’t care enough about what is happening to him.
Kutcher does what he can with this role, and I’ll give him credit for that. However, the rest of the movie that accompanies him just doesn’t do much or go anywhere. Good review Nostra.
I hoped it would be better, shame it wasn’t.
Yours and Dan’s comment above pretty much are in agreement with everything I have read about the film. I was looking forward to this one until I started reading the reviews.
Switching subjects, did you like the book? I own it, but I haven’t had the chance to read it yet.
Yeah the book is definitely worth reading if you are interested in learning more about a man and his drive to reach his goals. The fact that he was so different in regards to his personality makes it all the more interesting knowing that he managed to become a success.
Seems you like this more than I did Nostra. Apart from the physical resemblance, I thought Kutcher was just ok as Jobs. The material is my main issue w/ the film though, it’s just so superficial.
Yeah, there is never a moment where you are really invested. The part about his daughter could have had so much more depth.
This was one I was really keen to see…. but now I’ll have to temper my expectations. Nice review, Nostra. Good to hear Kutcher’s good as the man himself, even if the film ain’t so much….
Yeah don’t go in with huge expectations…