Review: Jobs

Made without any involvement from Apple, this Steve Jobs biopic from producer/Director Joshua Michael Stern isn’t hagiographic, and demonstrates that SJ was flawed: controlling, egomaniacal, aggressive and with some iffy ideas about women (but as this is a movie about blokes they barely get a look-in anyway). Yet the tone is nevertheless forgiving and eventually falls into the old cliché about how we’re meant to forgive his severe faults as he was a visionary genius, and it was okay if he rejected his first child for years and fired old friends for no reason and behaved horribly. Introduced as the greying Jobs in 2001, Ashton Kutcher is a good choice for the role as he looks like the guy and knows a thing or two about arrogance. It cuts back to Steve’s uni days in 1974, LSD trips, his work with Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad), the establishment of Apple, especially when Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney) became involved, and his rise to 80s titan status before he was thrown out and retreated to 11 years’ worth of family-raising (the film leaps from 1985 to 1996 without really explaining who Jobs’ wife is or anything about their kids). Of course Apple pleaded for his return in those scary later 90s, and he brought them back from the brink with iPods, fancily coloured Macs and more, and became a (quote) legend (unquote). Despite Kutcher’s impressive performance, a strong supporting cast (including Matthew Modine, JK Simmons and James Woods) and an initial fearlessness about presenting somesemblance of the ‘real’ Steve Jobs, this is, don’t forget, a film about a pushy guy who worked with computers, and not someone who crossed the Himalayas, united Israel and Palestine or cured AIDS. Some might think that saying that’s ‘pissing on Jobs’ grave’, as his fans insist – so sue me. Steve certainly would have.