Review of Jobs (movie)

I was actually deliberating between watching "Jobs" and "Elysium" (since they both came out in the cinemas the same week) when I decided to watch the former first. I am neither a fan of Apple products nor Steve Jobs himself but I thought that his life as the founder of Apple and the man who brought the company back to life with products like the iMac, iPod and of course, the most famous of all, the iPhone, would be quite interesting to see. However, I think this film does not do him justice at all and is a huge disappointment.

I can't say that I am very familiar with the key events of Steve Jobs' life but I know certain highlights like Apple Computer started in the garage of his foster parents' house and how he was kicked out of his company. However, the film began with an introduction of the iPod at an Apple Town Hall meeting and was then rewound to his days in college. That's when I think the film started to look more like a compilation of teasers rather than a biopic movie about Jobs. First of all, Jobs' fascination with calligraphy class and why he wanted to go to India and how it inspired him was never talked about in detail. All of a sudden, you see him thinking about his birth parents and he started crying in front of his buddy and girlfriend. The next scene would then jump to when he starts building Apple Computer. It feels as if the movie throws a couple of knots to the viewers, expects them to untie it with what they already know about Jobs or can infer from the "clues" given so far and hope that people will get what they are driving at. For someone like me who has never read Jobs' book nor know much about him, I was left bewildered most of the time.

The rest of the film continues in similar fashion with so many questions going on in my mind:
- Why did Jobs react so strongly to the news of his girlfriend's pregnancy? Why was he so convinced that her baby wasn't his? Did he react like this because he didn't want the pregnancy and family life to derail his career? And why did his daughter Lisa come back to live with him after he refused to acknowledge her? What happened to Lisa's mother?
- Why did Jobs start to be aloof towards his colleagues and friends? Was it success that got to his head? Was it his difficulty to interact with people that caused the situation?
- Why was Jobs so hung up about the fonts in the word processing program? Was it to do with the influence from the calligraphy class in college?
- And what happened after Jobs got rid of those who chased him out of Apple? What about the iPod? What about the iPhone?

And so, this led to me effectively switching off mentally at a couple of times throughout this movie. The choppy editing and jumping of scenes helped in shipping me off to slumberland too. The film gave me too many teasers but there was no way for me to find answers. And I can't help but feel that this movie is just a superficial look at Jobs only. I don't even know which is the image that the production crew wants to project. Is it the strictly-business only Jobs who may be a man with great ideas but extremely difficult to work with? Is it the heartless jerk who refused to acknowledge his daughter? I thought that the movie didn't actually paint Jobs in a good light but rather tried to show all his flaws with little for him to redeem himself. I'm sure that there could be more than what we saw in this movie but unfortunately, you won't be able to know Jobs better through this movie. You might as well get his book which should be clearer and gives you more information.

Given the limited time for the movie, I do appreciate that it is unlikely to include everything that may be of interest to viewers. However, I think that the production crew was probably too ambitious in trying to give a complete picture of Jobs but ended up upsetting the balance. If they had chosen to  focus on Jobs' professional life and how it was closely linked to Apple's fortune, this could have been a more inspiring piece of work. The obvious omission of an important part of Apple's history in the past 10 years or so was a glaring mistake. Apple became sought-after again after Steve Jobs returned so what exactly did he do to rejuvenate this company? I would have thought that most people will be interested in this part of Apple's history. Showing us a glimpse of iPod at the beginning of the film is simply not enough. If the intention had been to showcase more of Jobs rather than his baby Apple, there needs to be more insights into his interpersonal relationships. Otherwise, looking at this movie alone, you get the impression that Jobs is nothing but a jerk and yet his family and friends stick to him, somehow in one way or another. Then this leaves us with the question "why" because we don't know what is it that they saw in him which we as outsiders and viewers of this movie can't.

Despite my criticism for this movie, Ashton Kutcher surprised me with his portrayal of Jobs. At the beginning of the movie, I thought it was the real Steve Jobs at the Apple town hall. As the film progressed, his mannerisms including the way he walks and talks and how he looked like simply was like a carbon copy of Jobs. As such, I have to give Kutcher credit for being able to bring Jobs to life with his effort and dedication. Then again, if the script wasn't such a let-down, I think this would have been an opportunity for Kutcher to show off Jobs' inspirational leader side (although it looks obvious that he's a tough person to work with and under) . Too bad the movie just didn't match up and correspondingly, Kutcher's performance was somewhat restricted or dragged down by these limitations. If there is ever going to be a part 2 of Jobs or another crew gets together to produce something related to Steve Jobs, I think the most important thing to consider is, what angle of Jobs are you going to be looking at? For any famous person, there has got to be various angles you can look at so it will be best to choose appropriately rather than be overly ambitious and try to cover everything within 2 hours. I think "Jobs" was a victim of its own ambition and should have tried to make sure it could handle whatever it placed onto its plate. Unless you are a big fan of Jobs or Apple, I seriously think that this movie will probably leave you dissatisfied at the end.