"Jobs" - directed by Joshua Michael Stern
"Jobs" isn't the only Steve Jobs biopic heading our way.
There is another currently being written by the great Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network").
Presumably the second shot will have to use the title "Steve" or something relating to him or Apple.
Ten bucks says that they go with "Insanely Great".
If nothing else it offers up all manner of oh so clever review headlines for critics whether they love it or hate it.
There has already been one other notable Steve Jobs movie - "Pirates of Silicon Valley".
It is not amazing but it is a pretty damned good attempt at telling the story of Apple and Microsoft and those crazy early days of the personal computer industry.
It ends with Steve Jobs fired and Apple not doing very well without him.
(They weren't doing that well with him towards the end either to be fair)
"Jobs" has a wider scope than Pirates with the story stretching from his time co-founding Apple with 'Woz' up to his return to reinvigorate the company in spectacular fashion.
It does have an advantage given that the whole history of the late Steve Jobs is now presentable.
It also has a hard act to follow with not only Pirates but an absolute onslaught of books about the man including "i-Con", the superb "West of Eden" and the official biography "Steve Jobs".
Steve Jobs has long been a figure both greatly admired and greatly despised.
What both sides will agree on is that he is always fascinating.
"Jobs" opens in 2002 with Steve Jobs presenting the iPod for the first time to employees at an internal Apple meeting.
There are scoffs and doubting looks as he announces that they will be making a portable music player.
With the announcement that the device will store 1000 songs in your pocket he plucks the prototype from his own pocket and holds it up his audience.
They respond with a rapturous standing ovation.
His presentation has not been spectacular nor has he revealed anything revolutionary (yet) but he is met with a reaction usually reserved for President elects or rock stars.
How did he turn the scoffs and doubts into belief?
The effect is to make the people cheering look gullible and make Jobs look like he had nothing of any substance.
Of course history tells a different story.
The iPod was just one in a range of products including iMac's, iPhones and iPad's that Jobs oversaw that reinvigorated Apple, drove an industry and changed the way that people lived their lives.
Rarely during the course of the film did I see anything that showed what drove Jobs to do what he did or how he did it.
Each time key moments are introduced that could give us such insight the film backs away to explore something else.
Worst served is the period in which Jobs returned to Apple after years on his own.
This was a different man from the one who was fired by the man he himself had employed to run the company.
The real story of Steve Jobs centres on how a brash, arrogant, out of control young man morphed himself into someone who could turn around a down and out company and make it the most valuable corporation in the world.
It has been called the greatest second act in business history.
That story is not told here.
From the time that Jobs is ejected from Apple until the time that he returns he is shown with the Next computer and he is shown gardening with his wife and child.
Nothing about his involvement with Pixar, nothing about what Next was or how it would impact on Apple and absolutely nothing that shows the man changing or refining his uncanny knack at seeing the potential in products.
If the film showed a comprehensive view of what happened over the 27 year period it explores the lack of insight into the title character might have been more forgiveable.
However it is very low on any such detail and often gets things very wrong.
There are far too many key moments of such great interest left off the table.
The craziness during the design of the Macintosh and the Lisa in which Jobs actively cultivated antagonism between the divisions is vaguely hinted at.
Bill Gates is mentioned once when Jobs discovered that Microsoft had copied its operating system.
Wozniak is always portrayed as the goofy sidekick.
The story of Jobs is as much the story of those around him as it is of he himself.
The relationship between Jobs and Gates is a fascinating one of competition, revenge and ultimately sometimes begrudging respect.
During the early years of Microsoft's success an image consultant was called in to get Bill Gates out of his awful brown suits and into something worthy of an executive at his level.
Shown an Armani suit he reportedly snapped - 'I'm not wearing Armani- Steve Jobs wears Armani'.
Similarly as Apple was finding success security measures befitting a tech giant were introduced.
Shocked to see that Wozniak had employee badge number one and he number two Jobs refused to wear one.
When Wozniak said that he didn't care and would happily swap Jobs responded by requesting badge zero.
Wozniak himself is short changed many times but perhaps mostly heinous is the suggestion that Jobs introduced him to the burgeoning hobbyist scene rather than the correct other way around.
There are enough anecdotes like these to fill four movies and I am not suggesting that "Jobs" is weaker for not covering them all- merely that it fails because it doesn't get across the tone of the time.
This isn't the movie that I had hoped for and the definitive Apple / Steve Jobs movie is still up for grabs.
I love "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and Noah Wyle's performance remains my favourite but credit where it is due- Kutcher does a pretty good job.
Likewise veterans Modine and Mulroney do excellent work as Sculley and Markkula.
But lack of ambition and the curious decision to end the film well before many of Jobs' (and Apple as a company's) greatest achievements overpower anything that works.
A few quick captions announcing the pinnacle of the man and the company's success simply will not do.
It would be akin to Star Wars ending as the Millenium Falcon escapes the Death Star to be concluded with a caption that read - 'And Luke blew up the Death Star using the Force'.
A film covering this kind of material needs to either be three hours long to cover everything relevant or it needs to be incredibly smartly written so that the essence of the time, the company and most importantly the man are captured.
It is neither.
Jobs was a complicated character and it would be a mistake (and extremely hard) to try to analyze him but with so much history and so many great moments and products to cover we should have a better document than this to form our own conclusions as to what made him tick.
It is almost as if this film was made for people who already know a lot about the subject and can fill in the blanks.
The problem with this is that any degree of viewer knowledge of Jobs, Apple and the events from 1975 to the present works against the film by highlighting how inaccurate it is on many occasions and how much is in fact missing.
For anyone who doesn't know much about Steve Jobs but is looking to find out is best to read either the excellent "West Of Eden" or the 'official' Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
The latter was optioned by Sony Pictures and is the movie that Aaron Sorkin is working on.
Let's hope that this turns out better.
It is a testament to the achievements, the flaws and the status of its subject that "Jobs" the movie still manages to be enjoyable.
It is just far from the fitting document that we, and Jobs and his colleagues themselves deserve.
There is another currently being written by the great Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network").
Presumably the second shot will have to use the title "Steve" or something relating to him or Apple.
Ten bucks says that they go with "Insanely Great".
If nothing else it offers up all manner of oh so clever review headlines for critics whether they love it or hate it.
There has already been one other notable Steve Jobs movie - "Pirates of Silicon Valley".
It is not amazing but it is a pretty damned good attempt at telling the story of Apple and Microsoft and those crazy early days of the personal computer industry.
It ends with Steve Jobs fired and Apple not doing very well without him.
(They weren't doing that well with him towards the end either to be fair)
"Jobs" has a wider scope than Pirates with the story stretching from his time co-founding Apple with 'Woz' up to his return to reinvigorate the company in spectacular fashion.
It does have an advantage given that the whole history of the late Steve Jobs is now presentable.
It also has a hard act to follow with not only Pirates but an absolute onslaught of books about the man including "i-Con", the superb "West of Eden" and the official biography "Steve Jobs".
Steve Jobs has long been a figure both greatly admired and greatly despised.
What both sides will agree on is that he is always fascinating.
 |
| At times the mannerisms and moments in Kutcher's performance or over-done but the resemblance is often uncanny |
There are scoffs and doubting looks as he announces that they will be making a portable music player.
With the announcement that the device will store 1000 songs in your pocket he plucks the prototype from his own pocket and holds it up his audience.
They respond with a rapturous standing ovation.
His presentation has not been spectacular nor has he revealed anything revolutionary (yet) but he is met with a reaction usually reserved for President elects or rock stars.
How did he turn the scoffs and doubts into belief?
The effect is to make the people cheering look gullible and make Jobs look like he had nothing of any substance.
Of course history tells a different story.
The iPod was just one in a range of products including iMac's, iPhones and iPad's that Jobs oversaw that reinvigorated Apple, drove an industry and changed the way that people lived their lives.
Rarely during the course of the film did I see anything that showed what drove Jobs to do what he did or how he did it.
Each time key moments are introduced that could give us such insight the film backs away to explore something else.
Worst served is the period in which Jobs returned to Apple after years on his own.
 |
| Mulroney as Mike Markkula |
The real story of Steve Jobs centres on how a brash, arrogant, out of control young man morphed himself into someone who could turn around a down and out company and make it the most valuable corporation in the world.
It has been called the greatest second act in business history.
That story is not told here.
From the time that Jobs is ejected from Apple until the time that he returns he is shown with the Next computer and he is shown gardening with his wife and child.
Nothing about his involvement with Pixar, nothing about what Next was or how it would impact on Apple and absolutely nothing that shows the man changing or refining his uncanny knack at seeing the potential in products.
If the film showed a comprehensive view of what happened over the 27 year period it explores the lack of insight into the title character might have been more forgiveable.
However it is very low on any such detail and often gets things very wrong.
There are far too many key moments of such great interest left off the table.
The craziness during the design of the Macintosh and the Lisa in which Jobs actively cultivated antagonism between the divisions is vaguely hinted at.
Bill Gates is mentioned once when Jobs discovered that Microsoft had copied its operating system.
Wozniak is always portrayed as the goofy sidekick.
The story of Jobs is as much the story of those around him as it is of he himself.
The relationship between Jobs and Gates is a fascinating one of competition, revenge and ultimately sometimes begrudging respect.
During the early years of Microsoft's success an image consultant was called in to get Bill Gates out of his awful brown suits and into something worthy of an executive at his level.
Shown an Armani suit he reportedly snapped - 'I'm not wearing Armani- Steve Jobs wears Armani'.
Similarly as Apple was finding success security measures befitting a tech giant were introduced.
Shocked to see that Wozniak had employee badge number one and he number two Jobs refused to wear one.
When Wozniak said that he didn't care and would happily swap Jobs responded by requesting badge zero.
Wozniak himself is short changed many times but perhaps mostly heinous is the suggestion that Jobs introduced him to the burgeoning hobbyist scene rather than the correct other way around.
There are enough anecdotes like these to fill four movies and I am not suggesting that "Jobs" is weaker for not covering them all- merely that it fails because it doesn't get across the tone of the time.
 |
| Casting is very good - Ashton Kutcher with Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak and Ron Eldard as Rod Holt |
This isn't the movie that I had hoped for and the definitive Apple / Steve Jobs movie is still up for grabs.
I love "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and Noah Wyle's performance remains my favourite but credit where it is due- Kutcher does a pretty good job.
Likewise veterans Modine and Mulroney do excellent work as Sculley and Markkula.
But lack of ambition and the curious decision to end the film well before many of Jobs' (and Apple as a company's) greatest achievements overpower anything that works.
A few quick captions announcing the pinnacle of the man and the company's success simply will not do.
It would be akin to Star Wars ending as the Millenium Falcon escapes the Death Star to be concluded with a caption that read - 'And Luke blew up the Death Star using the Force'.
A film covering this kind of material needs to either be three hours long to cover everything relevant or it needs to be incredibly smartly written so that the essence of the time, the company and most importantly the man are captured.
It is neither.
Jobs was a complicated character and it would be a mistake (and extremely hard) to try to analyze him but with so much history and so many great moments and products to cover we should have a better document than this to form our own conclusions as to what made him tick.
It is almost as if this film was made for people who already know a lot about the subject and can fill in the blanks.
The problem with this is that any degree of viewer knowledge of Jobs, Apple and the events from 1975 to the present works against the film by highlighting how inaccurate it is on many occasions and how much is in fact missing.
For anyone who doesn't know much about Steve Jobs but is looking to find out is best to read either the excellent "West Of Eden" or the 'official' Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
The latter was optioned by Sony Pictures and is the movie that Aaron Sorkin is working on.
Let's hope that this turns out better.
It is a testament to the achievements, the flaws and the status of its subject that "Jobs" the movie still manages to be enjoyable.
It is just far from the fitting document that we, and Jobs and his colleagues themselves deserve.
| Rated | M for language and offensive hair styles |
| Running Time: | 127 minutes (1hr 59mins without end credits) |
| Starring: |
| Ashton Kutcher | --- Steve Jobs |
| Josh Gad | --- Steve Wozniak |
| Dermot Mulroney | --- Mike Markkula |
| Lukas Haas | --- Daniel Kottke |
| Matthew Modine | --- John Sculley |
| J/K Simmons | --- Arthur Rock |
| Lesley Ann Warren | --- Clara Jobs |
| John Getz | --- Paul Jobs |
| Ron Eldard | --- Rod Holt |
| Kevin Dunn | --- Gil Amelio |
| James Woods | --- Jack Dudman |
| Robert Pine | --- Ed Woolard |
| Abby Brammell | --- Laurene Jobs |
| Giles Matthey | --- Jonathan Ive |
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