If you love and adore Ashton Kutcher, and if you can stare at his face all day, well more like two hours and eight minutes, then you will absolutely love Jobs. Why is that? Simple, Ashton is in almost every last frame of this film. Yes, I know he's playing the man the film is named after but this almost seemed like a vanity project. There was little to nothing on those men that helped him initially build Apple Computers while in his parents garage. Without those men, there would have been no Apple and there would have been no Steve Jobs. This movie though makes it seem like he did everything all on his own damn near. This movie is woefully inconsistent in that regard. While Steve did bring the company he founded back from the brink of shutting down, I found myself wanting to know more about the team that helped him. That was rarely shown and those men saved his ass on more than one occasion from what I know.
You get a taste of how big a dick Steve is in this movie when working for Atari he's given an assignment to fox a troublesome game, if he can do it he'll get five thousand dollars. He can't so he calls his friend Steve Wozniak, played wonderfully by Josh Gad who saves the day. Does Jobs split the five thousand down the middle, of course not. He instead gives the man who actually fixed the game just seven hundred dollars. If you ever thought Steve Jobs was a saint, who could do no wrong, who was a man that deserved to be on a pedestal, this movie will destroy those notions quickly. Steve turned on his friends, his workers, and even turned his back on his own daughter. Ashton does his best to embody Steve by mimicking his wonky walk, wearing his facial hair like him, and rocking those horrible Birkenstock's, but all I kept seeing was Ashton playing Steve Jobs.
I'm not an Apple guy, there, I said it. I'm not part of the cult and I can't see me ever seeking membership. I do though remember reading about Steve and his fight against Bill Gates and Apple Computers as well and admiring the man. I admired his fight and determination to recapture what was his as well as fending off the vultures like Gates who sought to ride piggy back on his platforms. I would have liked to have seen more of that, instead we get a moment where Ashton is screaming into the phone at Bill threatening to destroy him. I was hoping for that moment where Steve is talking to his company and Bill appears on the screen behind him as the two men announce a truce and a partnership, that moment was iconic in my opinion, but it wasn't here. That may be because Jobs is the first professional writing assignment by Matt Whiteley so there were going to be a few things missed. What was a blatant miss though was the opening and closing of the movie.
The movie starts off with Steve introducing the first ipod to his company. He explains how it's "a thousand songs in your pocket" and you can hear the audible gasps from the assembled crowd. Then the movie flashes back to him in college, a drop out that stays on campus (which I don't get but whatever), and taking assorted classes. The problem with the beginning and the end is that they never meet. Why start with him introducing the ipod at the beginning and never go back to that moment and complete that loop? With unprecedented assistance and access from Apple, a good portion of this movie was shot on their campus in Cupertino, California so it's very pretty to look at and a pretty easy job for cinematographer Russell Carpenter though I can't help but wonder how this movie could have looked at the Apple Design team had shot it. The score by John Debney is over the top at times with its heroic themes for a dick of a man, other times it's charming and fits perfectly with what's on the screen.
For the Apple diehards and fanatics out there, this movie is especially for you. For everyone else who's a "PC" but curious about the man responsible for you ipad, ipod, or iphone I suggest you skip this movie. Unless you like movies and stories about men who are nothing but giant dicks. I'll see you at the theater.
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