Jobs: Trailer and Reviews

How do you portray a genius like Steve Jobs? The enigmatic, mercurial co-founder of Apple is known for his devotion to marrying design with technology--witness the iPhone in your hand, the MacBook Pro on your desk, the rise of the personal computer. But what was he really like? What did he like to eat? What was he afraid of? Did it bother him to have been adopted? The new movie by Joshua Michael Stern doesn't answer these questions, but it does show us Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) from his dropout days at Reed College to the introduction of the iPod in 2001. In the movie, he argues with this person and that, he yells and fires people who aren't as passionate about product as he is. For many Jobs devotees, that will be enough. But for those looking for some insight into what made Jobs tick, I suggest they buy Walter Isaacson's book Steve Jobs.

Here's what the critics are saying:

Like the man it’s about, “Jobs” is thin and unassuming, but keeps surprising you with ideas and innovation. An almost ironically styled old-fashioned biopic, this sharp look at the late Steve Jobs and the technological and cultural changes he brought about is entertaining and smart, with a great, career 2.0 performance from Ashton Kutcher. Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News 

Directed by Joshua Michael Stern (“Swing Vote”) and written by first-time screenwriter Matt Whiteley, “Jobs” confuses the story of Apple, the company, with the story of its guru and guiding force, spending way too much time on backroom personnel dealings than on encounters that might help us understand, on a deep level, the title character. Admittedly, the story of Jobs’s entrepreneurship is a fascinating one in its own right, and the film makes it clear that he was as much a corporate shark as a creative visionary. Michael O’Sullivan, the Washington Post

The greater blame rests on the filmmakers, who never find a way to navigate the “passions, perfectionism, demons, desires, artistry, devilry and obsession for control” that Walter Isaacson enumerated in “Steve Jobs,” his 2011 authorized biography. Mr. Stern and Mr. Whiteley pile up Jobs’s multitudes: he screams and smirks, the score rises triumphantly only to ease and darken. Other characters announce to Steve and one another that he’s changed. But how and why? There are nods at his adoption and the daughter he initially refused to acknowledge, but those never amount to much and, after a while, you don’t care. The Great Man theory of history that’s recycled in this movie is inevitably unsatisfying, but never more so when the figure at the center remains as opaque as Jobs does here. Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Over and over again, as I watched “Jobs,” the new biopic about the founder of Apple, I was reminded of the company’s immense influence on technology, the economy and especially my own life. Sadly, this was not because of the movie, but because of the iPhone I kept discreetly checking the time on in order to see how long before the film’s ending — which couldn’t come soon enough. At best, “Jobs” is a tasteful TV movie of the week, bland but competent, inoffensive but inherently forgettable. At worst, it’s a superficial, lackluster gloss on a man whose life deserves far better treatment, and far more scrutiny. Peter Suderman, Washington Times 

The problem is that it never really feels like much more. As we watch the character, we get a sense of what he was trying to do with his company, and we get a sense of a few of his quirks. But we don’t get his subliminal passions, his deepest fears, his inner life. We don’t get the kind of arresting portrait actors in any genre, but particularly a character piece, are supposed to give us.Perhaps that’s in some part because we’ve seen Jobs interact in real life, which leaves a lot less room for us to imagine him as something cinematic. Or perhaps it’s that the actor himself is too reverent toward his subject.--Steven Zeitchik Los Angeles Times

"Jobs" runs 122 minutes and is rated PG. It's playing at Beechwood Stadium Cinemas 11 and Carmike Cinema 12.