“It would drive Steve Jobs nuts to know that the new movie about his life has all the sex appeal of a PowerPoint presentation,” Manohla Dargis writes for The New York Times. “It isn’t only that PowerPoint has become synonymous with the dry, dreary, droning of corporate meetings or that it’s an application developed by Microsoft, itself a favorite target of Jobs. (‘The only problem with Microsoft,’ he said, ‘is they just have no taste.’ Also: ‘They just make really third-rate products.’)”
“The historical record is all that’s stretched in “’Jobs,’ which stars Ashton Kutcher and was directed by Joshua Michael Stern,” Dargis writes. “Compression and omissions are part of any biography. So it’s to be expected that a two-hour movie about one of the most important public figures in recent times leaves out a lot, including famous feuds, forgotten colleagues and even significant business ventures. The point isn’t that there are gaps; the point is what and who have been left out.”
Dargis writes, “Mr. Kutcher doesn’t have the tools that some actors use to transcend weak material and either he didn’t receive any help or didn’t allow any real direction from Mr. Stern. Mr. Kutcher’s tendency to cap so many emotional scenes with small, self-satisfied smiles is especially unfortunate because they can’t help but bring to mind his other career as a pitchman for digital cameras. The greater blame rests on the filmmakers, who never find a way to navigate the ‘passions, perfectionism, demons, desires, artistry, devilry and obsession for control’ that Walter Isaacson enumerated in Steve Jobs, his 2011 authorized biography.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Of course we have to see it, but, after these reviews, we’re not looking forward to it.
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