Jobs

MPAA/Content PG-13 [AC, AL]

Distributor Open Road Films

Technical HD 2.35:1

Genre(s) BIO DRA

Runtime 127 mins.

Country USA

Budget $12M

 

CAST

Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas. J.K. Simmons, Lesley Ann Warren, Ron Eldard, Ahna O’Reilly, John Getz, James Woods, Kevin Dunn, Robert Pine & Matthew Modine

 

CREDITS

Director: Joshua Michael Stern;  Screenwriter: Matt Whiteley;  Producer: Mark Hulme;  Director Of Photography: Russell Carpenter;  Production Designer: Freddy Waff;  Editor: Robert Komatsu;  Costume Designer: Lisa Jensen;  Music Composer: John Debney

 

THE SYNOPSIS

2001: Apple Computer CEO Steven P. Jobs (Kutcher) gives his staff a presentation on a revolutionary new music player called the “iPod”.

1974: Young, hippy Steve Jobs hangs out at Oregon’s Reed College, but has dropped his curriculum.  He audit classes at the behest of his mentor, Dean Jack Dudman (Woods)—who sees something special in the young man.  Befriending fellow student Daniel Kottke (Haas), the two head over to India for some barefoot soul-searching & LSD trips.

1976: While working at Atari, Steve hooks up with childhood friend Steve “Woz” Wozniak (Gad)—a Hewlett Packard computer wiz—to develop their own computer.  A new company is born: Apple…and their first headquarters is located in the garage of his adopted parents’—Paul (Getz) & Clara (Warren)—California home.  Daniel joins them, as do a few other computer geeks/buddies and a motorcycle-riding computer engineer named Rod Holt (Eldard).  A visionary investor, Mike Markkula (Mulroney), ponies up the cash to create, market & distribute the new Apple computer.

1977-1980: Apple becomes a very successful company—making Steve, Woz, Mike and a few other chosen employees very wealthy.  Marginalized by an increasingly-erratic Steve are his pregnant girlfriend Chris-Ann (O’Reilly) and Kottke—both of whom leave Steve.  Chris-Ann eventually gives birth to their daughter Lisa—whom Steve will shun for many years—but yet names Apple’s next computer the “Lisa”.

1981-1985: Apple has gone public…which brings in more wealth and more headaches—as Steve battles his Board.  They advise Steve to bring in a new CEO to run the company, so he chooses Pepsi honcho John Sculley (Modine), a financial & marketing wizard.  Things come to a head in 1984, when Steve launches the Macintosh Computer…a new design that (early on) stalls in sales.  Steve is forced out of his own company—the same one that a weary Woz left a while back.

1996-2001: An older, wiser Steve Jobs is married with a son—and has accepted his daughter Lisa into the fold.  He created another computer firm, NeXT—which he just sold to Apple!  Current CEO Gil Amelio (Dunn) and Markkula convince Steve to return to Apple as a consultant.  Shrewdly, Jobs aligns himself with top talent (like design maven Jonathan Ive) and influential Board Members like Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. (Pine)—and reclaims the throne by removing Amelio, Markkula and anyone else on the Board responsible for his ouster.

His first decree to his organization?  Think Different.

 

THE CRITIQUE

Archimedes.  Leonardo Da Vinci.  Johannes Gutenberg.  Alexander Graham Bell.  Nikola Tesla.  Thomas Edison.  David Sarnoff.  Steve Jobs.  Titans of technology…men of vision who succeeded in their respective fields.

The biopic JOBS does not posit Steve Jobs (1955-2011) as the most-influential technology maven of the 20^th century—the rest of us (i.e. humanity) are here to vouch for that statement.  Instead, the movie—written by first-time screenwriter Matt Whiteley—paints the man’s life in the broad strokes of a digital slide presentation.  Why only cover his life up until 2001?  Jobs’ made even greater strides in the last 10 years of his life…  Hello, iMac!  Yo, iTunes Store!

Though very frustrating, I get it.  When making a biopic, what ultimately suffers is a magnification of the usual compression issues.  In other words, filmmakers have to choose what to showcase and what not to in the interest of creating an exhibition-friendly 2-hour movie.  Especially in today’s brutal exhibition market.

As all of the blame cannot be thrust upon the screenwriter alone, we must turn to director Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote)—who must have made many of these choices.  Granted—and I will say this in the filmmakers’ defense: Apple provided NO help or consultation during the course of production.  Whiteley and Stern culled their material from books, articles & interviews with a few Jobs’ friends and early Apple employees—but not Woz, Markkula (who hated the script) nor Jobs’ family.  As I understand it, Woz was offered a consulting position on this production but declined, as he is working with writer Aaron Sorkin (Oscar^®-winner for The Social Network) on another Steve Jobs biopic over at Sony.  Who knows if that project will ever come to pass…

At the very least, Stern gets some mileage out of his cast.  Foremost is Ashton Kutcher—who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jobs himself.  He hits some points (the quirks) but misses others (the charismatic Jobs had a notoriously-Machiavellian dark side that uneased even his closest allies).  What I wanted from Kutcher (and the filmmakers) was a deeper understanding of what drove Steve Jobs.  Was it the fact that he was an orphan?  Was it too much LSD?  Was it the lack of hygiene back in the day?  Help me out!  (And whip out the iSoap while we’re at it!)

Luckily, Joshua Gads’ sensitive performance as the other Steve (Woz) acts as ballast.  I also liked Mulroney, Modine and even J.K. Simmons’ antagonistic role as real-life Apple board member and investor Arthur Rock.  Too bad we did not get enough of Eldard’s Ron Holt—the motorcycle dude with a bad-ass attitude and genius disposition.  He was amusing.

Tech credits are actually quite solid across the board for a movie made on a $12-million budget (boxofficemojo.com).  Though I am not a fan of HD lensing, my hat comes off to veteran cinematographer Russell Carpenter (Oscar^®-winner for 1997’s Titanic; also shot movies like Hard Target & True Lies) for creating a pleasant, widescreen palette that changes with the decades.  Of note, Carpenter performed cameraman duties on JOBS’ US shoot while Indian cinematographer Aseem Bajaj performed those duties for the sequences shot (guerilla-style) in India.

Time periods flow thanks to good cutting by editor Robert Komatsu (Frost/Nixon) while production design under newbie Freddy Waff and costumes by veteran Lisa Jensen (Mannequin, Grumpy Old Men & Swing Vote) bring verisimilitude to the entire cine-schema.  The ‘70s look like the ‘70s; the ’80s feels like the ‘80s…etc.  These facets are, of course, abetted by a strong soundtrack featuring artists like Cat Stevens, Joe Walsh, Bob Dylan & REO Speedwagon.

Considering how vast the Cult Of Apple is—it boggles my mind that no one (other than my younger brother & I) actually went to see this movie.  Perhaps the movie-going public would prefer to see Ashton Kutcher on TV ads, hawking cameras than on the big screen—or tweet him on Twitter…both of which don’t require the purchase of a movie ticket, by the way.

I guess that to really understand/appreciate/loathe/admire the late Steve Jobs, one must read author Walter Isaacson’s highly-regarded biography, Steve Jobs—sanctioned by the man himself as a way to validate his legacy.  For me, Jobs’ legacy lives on in all of the Apple products I use—like the Mac I wrote this review on!

 

THE BOTTOM LINE

JOBS is a noble attempt at encapsulating one of the 20^th Century’s most dynamic innovators, but comes up short.  A truncated screenplay structure and a director who doesn’t go for the gusto is to blame.  All is not a total loss, however, as Kutcher’s uncanny resemblance to the real Steve Jobs—and a solid supporting cast—helps the viewer get a taste of what could have been had the filmmakers not gone the cliché route…but instead tried to “think differently”.

IMDB:              http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2357129/

Wikipedia:      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_(film)

Official Site:    http://jobsthefilm.com/