Jobs

I wish this movie didn't relate so much to "The Social Network". Both films have much in common in terms of their narratives that it is hard to judge them separately. "The Social Network" is a beautiful-looking film with an inspiring story. The best dramas have conflicts that are fun to watch. The conflicts in "Jobs" are not as fun to watch. There seems to be more failures of Steve Jobs that are shown in this movie than successes. This lack of balance between conflicts and triumphs in the movie affects its entertainment value. Some aspects like the visual design and acting are well done but the story matters most to me. Another flaw of the story is the depiction of the protagonist. This movie might have been better under a more experienced director and/or writer.

The filmmakers appear to assume that the conflicts in the story will be balanced with the audience's pre-existing knowledge of Steve Jobs' achievements. For example, we don't get to see what happens after the first West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 and we suddenly are in 1980 at Apple Campus. The filmmakers take for granted that the audience already knows how successful the Apple II was and we don't get to see our hero enjoy financial and commercial success. He goes immediately from one conflict to another. The same happens pretty much for the time period in between 1985 and 1996. Some members of the film audience may know the whole story but many don't. Putting that aside, you have to show triumphs anyways in a biopic in order to balance the hardships. How good would the story of the American Revolution be for example if George Washington's crossing of the Delaware was left out due to the lone fact that everyone is familiar with that part of the tale. For crying out loud, the entire story of Steve Jobs is familiar or there wouldn't be an audience for this show in the first place. The purpose of a biopic to dramatize the life of an individual; both the ups and downs. Sometimes embellishing the story can work for entertainment purposes. There was little or no embellishment in "Jobs". At this point, I would like to relate some events in Steve Jobs' career during the aforementioned time period in between 1985 and 1996 that were not shown in the movie. In 1986, Steve Jobs bought a small company that was to become Pixar from Lucasfilm and as time passed, he began to lose a million dollars a year trying to keep it going. He was very forgiving however and one week after "Toy Story" came out, Pixar went public and Jobs raised $132,000,000. Steve Jobs was also the executive producer of "Toy Story". That aspect of his career would have been worth showing for at least ten minutes of the movie alongside the history of Apple at that time. This would have led up story-wise to his return to Apple. Instead, we get NeXT Computer and for only a blink of an eye it seems. In short, the story of "Jobs" had too many downs and not enough ups where as the true life story of Steve Jobs had plenty of ups. Another imperfection with the film is the depiction of the main character. Don't get me wrong, Ashton Kutcher did his job very well; I am talking from a script-writing point of view. Steve Jobs was an obsessive perfectionist who was a visionary and this makes him a mysterious individual. How did this genius come up with the things that he did? "Jobs" portrays him almost as a computer prophet who isn't relatable. Protagonists must be relatable for the story to be entertaining or inspiring. We all want to know who Steve Jobs was and see him on a more human level but this film portrays him as the enigma that we already know he is. It is true that the opening of the film shows Steve in font classes and in India. We also see him towards the end of film having trouble with his CD player. The problem is that those scenes do not relate with the Apple Lisa and iPod scenes as much as they should.

Having voiced my criticisms, I will now mention what was good about "Jobs" because most of the film was well done. I liked the irony of Steve Jobs pushing out Gil Amelio. You could tell that Steve wasn't too happy about doing it because he knows how Gil feels. It wouldn't be right to leave out of this film one of the most successful Super Bowl commercials of all time. By the way, director Ridley Scott made that 1984 commercial for Apple. The design of the film is noteworthy. There is a good use of color to depict the various decades: yellow for the 70's to represent the humble beginnings of the company, white for the 80's to symbolize Apple's impact and a pristine white for the 90's to foreshadow Apple's influence in the new century. The lighting in the movie gets brighter as we move further in time. I love the fact that the filmmakers used the actual famous garage of Steve Jobs in filming the movie. The use of hair, makeup and costume is the movie's best quality. I could saw a believable Steve Jobs on the screen and Ashton Kutcher's performance did the rest. While the emotional depiction of Steve Jobs was faulty, Kutcher's acting was not in that he delivered what the script called for. I didn't even recognize J. K. Simmons from the "Spider-Man" trilogy and it wasn't just his appearance that fooled me. His performance was also a reason why he became his character in "Jobs". Josh Gad was one of the best actors in the film and it was great to see Matthew Modine from "The Dark Knight Rises" and Kevin Dunn. James Woods was also hard to recognize until the middle of his scene. Much credit again goes to the costume, hair and make-up departments.

One great indirect consequence from this film was Ashton Kutcher's Teen Choice Award speech. That was quite uncharacteristic of him and well spoken. This movie might entertain less picky moviegoers but in my opinion, "Jobs" had too much conflict and not enough happy moments. We were not given a new outlook on Steve Jobs himself either. I was impressed with the acting and design of the film. After seeing this movie, I was happy about the news that Aaron Sorkin (who wrote "The Social Network") is writing a different movie about Steve Jobs and that the real life Steve Wozniak was involved in that version ("Woz" did not care for "Jobs" by the way). I had more faith in that film but it turned out to be just as good as this film.

3.5 Stars