Movie Review – Steve Jobs

Perhaps I’m not the right critic for this review. I am bias towards Apple and her brilliant co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. I am what you call an Apple Fanboy. I’m also a fan of Aaron Sorkin’s work capturing Zuckerberg’s pretentious veneer in the critically-acclaimed Social Network. Each has it’s own attitude, but Steve Jobs most feels like an actual Apple product. Of course, I’m referring to the oft-synonymous adjectives elegant, smart, and well-designed.
The film is broken into three acts, centered around three of Jobs’ more important product launches: the Macintosh, NeXT’s Black Box, and the iMac. Sorkin’s material is loosely based on the Walter Isaacson-scribed authorized biography as well as input from Steve Wozniak. But even Sorkin doesn’t want Steve Jobs remembered as a bio-pic more than a work of fiction, as most depicted interactions are fabricated. The picture is meant to capture an overall portrait of a flawed genius.
That flawed genius is played exceptionally-well by Michael Fassbender. Not anyone’s first choice, mine included, but Fassbender makes flawless execution of Sorkin’s heavy-handed dialogue. He looks nothing like Steve Jobs, and he never quite inherits the nonverbal mannerisms either, however, neither prevented me from accepting his interpretation. I enjoyed Fassbender’s work with Kate Winslet who plays Jobs’ marketing partner Joanna Hoffman, although Winslet’s European accent grows remarkably thicker in the second act and briefly distracts. The biggest miscue I think is in regards to Danny Boyle relegating Seth Rogen to play a mouth-breathing, whiney version of Wozniak.
Boyle does craft a believable tale in part to his wonderful partnership with Fassbender, as well as, beautifully orchestrated blocking and editing. Sorkin wrote a fantastic line about Jobs playing the orchestra, which in my opinion, is some sort of metaphor for Boyle’s filmmaking as well. I think the real issue for audiences will be whether they can swallow the verbal onslaught produced by Sorkin’s script. Sorkin clearly toiled away at his Macbook with an abused thesaurus by his side. He’s an amazing writer and in fine form here…I just can’t imagine people really talking this way.
I think it’s definitely worth seeing for a glimpse of Jobs’ perfectionism and the stressful interpersonal connections, but also, the film touches on his relationship with ex-lover Christen Brennan and daughter Lisa, something that was mistakenly dismissed in the Ashton Kutcher-led version jOBS. I can’t speak for its accuracy, but Steve Jobs makes for great drama. See it at launch.