Jobs

Steve Jobs is obviously one of the men this year that fascinates the public. Who was the man who created Apple? What was he like? What's his story? Why was he fired from Apple? The list of questions goes on, and this movie was going to be the first to answer it. But more importantly, American audiences simply aren't interested in an interesting man's story put to film. We want to learn about the man, learn the intricacy's of the story, and see the conflict that makes this story worthy to be a film.

Not even the public is satisfied by this film. That's saying something. Scoring an abysmal 25% and only a 50% audience score, this highly anticipated film managed to take its highly marketable status and barely finish in 7th place this week, losing to Kick-Ass 2 and The Butler. I wouldn't have called either of those. Poor audience score and low box office performance? (Granted it'll be profitable.)

There's only one way to describe Jobs - a misfire. It might be accurate, it might be flawlessly performed. But at the end of the day, this is film making at its worst. I have a sneaking suspicion this was a passion project, written and directed as a film that could not fail. But the film doesn't leave any emotion at all. Its formula is simple - something wrong, then it's fixed. Something wrong, then it's fixed. Something wrong, then it's fixed. It loses any sense of drama. Perhaps his life had a lot of short comings and problems, but maybe the best way to tell this story is to cut some of the stories. We don't need to see everything to see this as a success story. We don't need to know about his potential daughter (at least, not through the character this film creates). We didn't even need to know about his relationship with Bill Gates.

All this comes down to is a lack of an interesting character. And that's not necessarily Ashton Kutcher's fault. Granted, I don't like him very much as an actor, but I have to respect him for doing his very best with this role. Given a much stronger script, he probably would have seen as Oscar nomination for no other reason than the titular role. But the script is sadly very face value. There's no depth to what I'm watching. Sure, we know the ending. But films like Argo, Titanic, Lincoln, Frost/Nixon, they have the ability to make a known ending into a suspenseful, well written story. To take a man like Steve Jobs, a man who turned around a completely failing company into one of the most successful in history, how can you not make a story like that inspiring?

It's apparently simple - shove in as many stories from Jobs' life, keep characters only at surface value, keep the story from being able to explore Jobs' relationships and friendships, force some sentimentality by including his relationship with his potential daughter, and you have a story that tries to make you feel, but fails. You've watched a movie that maybe informed you on his life, but did no more to inspire you for success than a Lifetime original film.

It's sad. We all have hopes for a good Jobs movie...good thing we're getting the Aaron Sorkin script about Steve Jobs in the future. That will be magnificent.

Rank - 1.5/5