Jobs (film)
Jobs is a 2013 American biographical drama film based on the life of Steve Jobs, from 1974 while a student at Reed College to the introduction of the iPod in 2001.[3] It is directed by Joshua Michael Stern, written by Matt Whiteley, and produced by Stern and Mark Hulme. Steve Jobs is portrayed by Ashton Kutcher, with Josh Gad as Apple Computer's co-founder Steve Wozniak. Jobs was chosen to close the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.[4][5]
Jobs
Matt Whiteley
- Joshua Michael Stern
- Mark Hulme
Robert Komatsu
- Five Star Feature Films
- IF Entertainment
- Venture Forth
- Silver Reel
- Endgame Entertainment
- January 25, 2013 (Sundance Film Festival)
- August 16, 2013 (United States)
129 minutes[1]
United States
English
$12 million[2]
$42.1 million[2]
Plot[edit]
The film opens in 2001 with a middle-aged Steve Jobs introducing the iPod at an Apple Town Hall meeting.[6]
The story flashes back to Reed College in 1974. The high tuition forces Jobs to drop out, but Dean Jack Dudman allows him to sit in on classes. Jobs is particularly interested in a calligraphy course. Jobs meets up with his friend Daniel Kottke, who is excited to see Jobs with a copy of Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass. Influenced by this book and their experiences with LSD, Jobs and Kottke spend time in India. His philosophical ideas also lead Jobs to the decision not to wear any footwear.
Two years later, Jobs is back in Los Altos, California, living with his adoptive parents Paul and Clara. While working for Atari as a video game developer, Jobs develops a partnership with his friend Steve "Woz" Wozniak. Jobs is charged by his boss Al Alcorn to re-develop an arcade video game (Breakout), which he ends up having Wozniak build in his place. The job is such a success that Alcorn presents it to President Nolan Bushnell, but Jobs inequitably distributes the salary for the game development between Wozniak and himself.
Later, Jobs discovers that Wozniak has built a prototype for a "personal home computer" (the Apple I), which he expresses interest in commercializing. They name their new company Apple Computer, though there is another company called Apple Records that is owned by The Beatles (Wozniak teases Jobs that this symbolizes his preference for Bob Dylan). After a failed sale at his employer company HP, Wozniak reluctantly demonstrates the Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club to a bored audience. Jobs is later approached by store owner Paul Terrell who shows interest in the Apple I. Jobs persuades his father Paul to let them set up their new company in the family's garage workshop. Jobs also recruits Kottke, fellow engineer Bill Fernandez, and young neighbor Chris Espinosa to the Apple team.[7]
Terrell's disappointment in the Apple I (in his opinion, being only a motherboard and not a full computer as promised), inspires Jobs to restart with a second model. He hires Rod Holt to re-conceptualize the power supply for what will be called the Apple II. Mike Markkula, a venture capitalist, notices Jobs and Wozniak's work, and also joins Apple. The Apple II is released at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire where it is a remarkable success.
Apple's success eventually causes Jobs to distance himself from his friends. Upon learning his high-school girlfriend Chrisann Brennan is pregnant, Jobs ends their relationship. Brennan gives birth to Lisa Brennan whom Jobs denies is his child. Kottke (now an Apple II Plus repairer) meanwhile leaves the company after acknowledging that his friend Jobs (who hardly even has any time to talk to him) is not rewarding the Apple I team with any Apple stock. John Sculley is recruited as CEO of the company. As Jobs' behavior grows more erratic, Jobs is moved from the Apple Lisa development team to the Macintosh Group where he works with Bill Atkinson, Burrell Smith, Chris Espinosa, and Andy Hertzfeld. Despite the change, his behavior does not change: he forces out Jef Raskin, the original Macintosh group leader, and then takes his place. Later, he phones Microsoft founder Bill Gates, legally threatening him because their Word software is, in his opinion, a plagiarism of his team's word processor. Wozniak, still part of the Apple IIe team, decides to leave the company, feeling it has lost its way.
Though the Macintosh is introduced with great fanfare in 1984, including a high-budget television commercial, it is seen as a failure due to the disproportionately high cost (as compared to the competitor IBM's DOS-based PCs). Jobs, convinced that the error is the limited random-access memory of the system, launches a new, more advanced version, but Scully forces him out of the company in 1985.
The film jumps to 1996. Jobs is married to Laurene Powell Jobs and he has accepted Lisa as his daughter (she now lives with them). He has a son, Reed, and is also running NeXT. When Apple buys NeXT, then-CEO Gil Amelio asks Jobs to return to Apple as a consultant. Jobs is soon named the new CEO, then fires Amelio and relieves the Board of Directors. Jobs becomes interested in the work of Jony Ive, particularly during the design of the iMac and strives to reinvent Apple. The film ends with Jobs recording the dialogue for the Think Different commercial in 1997. Before the credits, there is a photo montage of the main characters paired with film clips of the actor playing the part, plus a dedication to Jobs.
Release[edit]
The Business Insider described the film's opening as a box-office bomb, earning $6.7 million in its first weekend and placing seventh overall.[15]
It had a worldwide gross of $42.1 million against its $12 million budget,[16] making the film a modest box office success.
Reception[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 28% of 135 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "An ambitious but skin-deep portrait of an influential, complex figure, Jobs often has the feel of an over-sentimentalized made-for-TV biopic."[17] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 44 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[18] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.[19]
E! Online said, "Critics have taken the film to task for a reach that falls far short of its ambition, marred by its superficial and unsatisfying portrait of an icon who deserved better."[20] Forbes reported that the consensus among critics was "mixed positives for Kutcher's performance" and a "thumbs down for Joshua Michael Stern's film."[21]
Robert X. Cringely, author of Accidental Empires and creator of the documentaries Triumph of the Nerds and Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, argues that "the film is beautifully shot and Kutcher's portrayal of Jobs, while not spot-on, is pretty darned good. He certainly has the look down and the walk. But Ashton Kutcher also produced this film and he's definitely a better actor than producer. There are a lot of historical inaccuracies that just don't have to be there. ... The great failing of this film is the same failing as with Walter Isaacson's book: something happened during Steve's NeXT years (which occupy less than 60 seconds of this 122-minute film) that turned Jobs from a brat into a leader, but they don't bother to cover that."[22] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle states that "at its best, it's a good picture, and at its worst, it's almost good."[23] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone suggests that "Kutcher nails the genius and narcissism. It's a quietly dazzling performance" but also notes that "Jobs is a one-man show that needed to go for broke and doesn't. My guess is that Jobs would give it a swat."[24] Contributor for rogerebert.com, Susan Wloszczyna, gave the movie 2/4 stars, saying that, "Rather than attempting a deeper plunge behind the whys and wherefores of the elite business-model gospel according to Apple Inc. guru Steve Jobs and – more importantly – what it says about our culture, the filmmakers follow the easy rise-fall-rise-again blueprint familiar to anyone who has seen an episode of VH1's Behind the Music."[25] She further discusses how Kutcher's performance and the overall movie failed to portray Jobs in the iconic manner that current pop culture suggests even after Jobs' passing. In a movie review for The New York Times, writer Manohla Dargis writes that Jobs was "inevitably unsatisfying"[26] and a result of a poor performance of the filmmakers rather than the actors themselves.
