Jobs

I've seen this film and the one starring Michael Fassbender, "Steve Jobs". The difference between the two is this - This film shows a great deal of Steve's' life, with a real accent on the mid to late 70s as Apple was being created. The Fassbender film only shows three specific scenes in Steve's life, but by the time the film is through, even though Fassbender does not even resemble Steve Jobs, you feel like you are looking right at him because of Fassbender's electrifying performance. In "Jobs" Kutcher may be made up to look and walk like Jobs, but I never feel like I am getting into the head of Steve Jobs.

What does this film do well? The first half of it captures the look and feel of early home computing in a totally realistic way - the kind of people who were involved, the way that they dressed, what early homemade personal computers in the 1970s looked like. What did they look like? It was like the first cars when they were called "horseless carriages" because that's what people AND the inventors understood as the old paradigm. The horse was being replaced with an engine and the rest of the car looked like carriages always had looked. So the earliest computers had switches and lights and sat in unattractive blue boxes that engineers thought were great, but the average person had no idea what to do with such a thing and didn't want one.

What did this film do poorly? I'd say Steve Wozniak is presented as a mere shadow of himself here. You never see the camaraderie or dynamic between himself and Jobs. The old Home Brew Club looked up to Wozniak, and when he presents the first "Apple" computer to them they just look bored and Woz looks scared.

Finally I come to Ashton Kutcher. Ashton Kutcher's problem is that he did one of his earliest roles so well and so long - that of mega screw up Kelso in the long running TV comedy "That 70's Show". He did it so well in fact that I ALWAYS see Kelso whenever I see Kutcher, no matter how well he is performing. In this film I kept waiting for his 70's Show girlfriend, alpha female attack dog Jackie, to come jumping out of a dark corner and start yelling at him and tell him what a screw up he is. Kutcher can't help this. I call it "Norman Bates Syndrome" - the same thing that happened to Anthony Perkins. No matter what role Anthony Perkins took after Psycho, no matter how well he did it, he was always Norman Bates. You just kept waiting for him to hit somebody over the head and start preparing the body to add to his collection of stuffed animals/people.

This is not a terrible film on Jobs. Nobody does a bad job, and it is interesting from a history of personal computing perspective. I'd say see this one for the history, and watch the Fassbender rendition in "Steve Jobs" to get a feel for the essence of the man, who will always remain somewhat of an enigma.

Let's see, well it was worth seeing for me; however, I wished I had waited till is came out on television -- Because it was really a "movie of the week"... do they still have those? To say this movie was weak on facts would imply they got it ALL wrong - Yes, they made some things up doing the "hollywood thing" but they didn't even attempt half the history so they couldn't have gotten it ALL wrong! Parts of his life missing were glaring!

They glossed over years -- Heck decades at points, concentrating on Apple more than Steve Jobs in my opinion... maybe a better name would have been "Apple & jobs - Some of the Years"!

Wait for the movie to hit your TV and know you will still be missing more than half the story!

Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) is shown starting from his college drop out years in 1974 to working at Atari in 1976. He joins up with Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) bringing Woz's computer to Homebrew. With Woz, they start Apple in his garage. Former Intel guy Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney) becomes their investor.

I'm sure Steve Jobs fans have a thousand mistakes they like to point out and a thousand more complaints about his douchie portrayal. I have a more simpler complaint. This is no more than a simple made-for-TV movie. Ashton Kutcher is doing more mimicry than actually taking on the persona. I actually put most of this on the shoulders of director Joshua Michael Stern. There are too many Jobs speeches and pontifications. It's an easy way to copy Steve. Maybe it's too easy. It needs to go deeper.

It is somewhat ironical that the man who always signed his name in the lower case 'steven p. jobs' has the movie in his name titled in capital JOBS. For me this was the most awaited movie of the year, more so because of having read the biography a couple of times. The ironies however does not end with the case of the font but the perfectionist he was, I am sure if among us today he would have wanted some (major) iterations in the movie before his actual story came out to the public. A movie reaches out to a much wider audience exponentially than a book and those of you who have read the book should agree with me that movie did not do complete justice to Jobs biopic.

Joshua Michael Stern who is known for directing dramas, has concentrated more on the dramatic side of Jobs rather than the genius his was. He has failed to explain the reason behind his outbursts, his mad passion for perfection, and the primary reason for the personality that was the Steve Jobs. I would not dwell into the particular events but Stern could have shown the cause and consequence for the milestones he achieved. Whether it was shortage of time or bad script writing the movie would fail to connect with audience who do not much about Jobs. Moreover, important events which made Jobs what he is like the creation of NeXT, the buying of Pixar and his fight with cancer are completely missing.

Ashton Kutcher has come a long way from portraying the stupid kid in That 70's show to portraying one of the geniuses of our generation. He is eerily similar to the original Steve Jobs and full marks to him for taking on the nuances, the body language and the talking style of the Apple founder. The jaw line was perfect and as a young Jobs he was flawless. The script could have given him more to showcase his acting prowess but sadly the whole movie cracked around there. I am sure Jobs family would also share the view of Kutcher doing a brilliant "JOB".

The only other character worth mentioning is that of Mike Marrkula played by Dermot Mulroney a brilliant actor with an equally brilliant performance. Matthew Modine, James Woods, John Getz and others are just supporting the main man as the in his real life it was all about himself. The music is good and you get to hear some famous Bob Dylan songs in the movie, as Steve was a big Dylan fan all this life.

Even though for me Steve Jobs life has been a 5/5, I had expected a much better product from the production and so would have Jobs. A 3/5 from me sadly for the movie and for all the Jobs and Apple fans this is a must watch. However I would suggest you read the book before going to the movie. Alternatively, if you have seen the movie and not the read the book, now is the time to pick it up and do it.

Ashton Kutcher isn't exactly the best actor but I don't think he was a bad choice for Steve Jobs. He literally looks like him unlike Michael Fassbender. Josh Gad was also a good choice for Steve Wozniak. I understand this film is known for its historical inaccuracies, but I was still able to watch this film regardless.