One-of-a-kind visionary.
Calculating businessman.
Marvelous marketer. Driven
problem-solver. Out-of-the box creative
thinker. By and large," JOBS"
conveys all these about Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher), the legendary founder of
Apple. It also conveys the not-so-nice,
personal side of Jobs as it relates to the way he treats his pregnant
girlfriend and first-born child, and loyal employees in the early stage of his
success.
A temperamental perfectionist, Jobs has his own vision of the
world and pushes the limit of the people around him to continuously create and
innovate. He has no qualm in tossing
aside those who don't share his vision for the future.
Kutcher is earnest in his portrayal of Jobs. He does mimic him in so many ways, although
there are scenes that we don't forget it's Kutcher, the actor. Josh Gad shares the spotlight in a
sensitive, humble performance, as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. He counterbalances Jobs' ambitious,
idealistic persona.
The opening, introducing the iPod, successfully grabs your
attention, but the movie doesn't delve into how he gets up to that star moment
in the podium. No progress is shown
from his early days of revolutionizing personal computer. If you're an Apple fan, know that it also
omits completely the story of how other live-changing devices, such as iPhone
or iPad, came into existence.
There are inspiring scenes, showcasing Job's rare talent to
rally people around him and buy into his crazy idea that they can will people
into buying something they haven't seen and don't know they need or want. And making that something easy, practical
and cool at the same time. He
challenges conventional belief and doesn't put a limit of he can do. By thinking differently and limitlessly,
he's able to achieve what he did and changed the world in the process.
As a biopic, what it lacks is storytelling. It labors too much on the technical minutiae
and boardroom politics (CEO John Sculley and original funder Mike Markkula,
played by Matthew Modine and Dermot Mulroney, respectively), but skims the
surface of the character. We don't get
to see why Jobs becomes the way he is and how he evolves as an individual. And when the story jumps into the future, it's
not clear how he gets there.
With the right script, one that makes "The Social Network" award-winning, "JOBS" could have been
larger-than-life. Here, it's just
passable, which would not have passed Jobs' own standards.