MOVIE REVIEW - Jobs

It's amazing how someone can decide to make a movie about someone with such a creative and out of the box mind, and make a movie that is everything the subject matter would hate.

That is the new movie, Jobs.   The bio-pic of Apple computer, and basically the personal computer inventor, Steve Jobs.  This stars Ashton Kutcher as the computer icon Steve Jobs and he never has a chance.  The script here is so terrible that this movie never gets off the ground at all.

This chronicles Jobs from his time as a college drop out till his re-emergence at Apple Computers after being forced out of his own company a few years earlier.  It takes us through the invention of the personal computer and his vision for what technology should be according to him.  Jobs felt that new technology should be an extension of one's self.  A theory that made him a giant, and has propelled his company today to one of the largest in the world.  Jobs of course died in 2011 at the age of 56. 

What this movie does well at times is create Jobs in a honest light.   They make Jobs fallible, which is crucial for cred.   But as the flaws start spewing out though, you realize Jobs according to this pic, was a self-absorbed, narcissistic, raging ego-manic with no real sense of one shred of common decency.  That may be true, but it doesn't make it very pleasant movie going.  This movie also goes through a few scenes where young Jobs is preaching like a religious figure to his adoring disciples, and those look silly and unrealistic. And even though there is some growth in character in this movie, you don't care for him much at the end of the movie either.  You respect the fact that he was a huge mind, you are realize he never really used the part that would have helped him as a person.

What this does, is turn into a movie more about the corporate world at large and less about him the guy.  It shows all the back stabbing and all the lying that you might expect, but that again is not very entertaining.  There is not near enough focus... on his creative focus.   They show the advent of the first PC, and that's fine.  But how did he come up with the I-Pod, I-Pad, and where did those visions come from?  Did he actually invent those things?  I can see a corporate greed movie anywhere anytime.  There are no shortage of those out of Hollywood.  Plus this movie barley mentions the rift between Bill Gates and Jobs, just a simple screaming phone call where Jobs accuses Gates of stealing all his software. 

Sadly, this movie is so amazingly average in every single way.  The script is poor, characters come and go without any real say as to who they really are.  The soundtrack is incredibly cliche' using the same old rock anthem songs every time piece movie uses.  There is no strike of creativity that the man Steve Jobs would have insisted on from his own self and employees.

Jobs.   DOS, floppy disc and monochrome.