It's something even Jobs' staunchest admirers have to wrestle with, and the film could have used more of that. Only Gad, as Wozniak, gets a scene standing up to the great man - as Woz quits Apple, he criticizes Jobs for losing his humanity amid a single-minded pursuit of making great products. Women in the film barely exist an actress playing Chris-Ann Brennan has a single underwritten scene informing a young Jobs that she is carrying his baby years later in the film, a small scene shows Jobs at home with his wife. Simmons, as the Apple board chairman who oversees Jobs' ouster, is a cartoon villain. Dermot Mulroney, as early Apple investor Mike Markkula, shakes his head at Jobs' excesses without ever really challenging him. Kutcher speaks fully 40 percent of the lines in "Jobs." Unfortunately, he has almost no one to play off of. The result is that the viewer spends two hours watching cardboard cutouts lose arguments to Ashton Kutcher. ![]() The film mentions Lisa's failure but has no interest in what part Jobs played in that failure all Apple failures in "Jobs" are portrayed as the result of conservative, backward-thinking executives beholden only to their shareholders. Co-workers argue with him, but they never get anywhere, because their parts are poorly written and the filmmakers have no interest in showing their subject being wrong about his work. Each time, he speaks of how the technology Apple is building will improve the lives of average people. (It is left to someone else, far off screen, to turn his visions into reality.) We watch Jobs out-negotiate a computer parts store owner, lecture the team making the Lisa, and ride to the rescue of the Macintosh. Over and over again, minor characters explain to him why something can't be done Kutcher-as-Jobs smiles enigmatically and waves away their concerns. ![]() Yet the filmmakers are more interested in showing Jobs going about the work of being a genius. Only Apple's near-death experience in 1997 is enough to bring him back to Apple - first as an adviser, then as an "interim" CEO - and with the success of the Bondi blue iMacs, Apple was ascendant once again. But Sculley disappoints Jobs, who alienates his allies on Apple's board of directors and is ousted from the company he started. Jobs hand-picks John Sculley to become Apple's CEO, hoping his marketing expertise will help the company overtake IBM in the PC market. Along the way "Jobs" covers most of the major milestones of its subject's time at Apple: the Apple I, the Apple II, the Lisa, and the Macintosh all are shown in development, as Jobs (a hard-working Ashton Kutcher) works to bring his vision of personal computing to the masses. The script by first-time screenwriter Matt Whiteley covers Jobs' life from 1974, when Jobs attended classes at Reed College in Oregon, to 2001, when he announced the iPod to Apple employees. The team behind "Jobs," which was directed by Joshua Michael Stern, began working on the project shortly before Jobs retired from Apple in 2011. It's a scene that sets the tone for all that is to follow: for most of the film's two hours, "Jobs" rarely stops clapping for its subject. Before he can even show them the iPod, the employees have sprung to their feet, wild-eyed and ecstatic, and their thunderous applause is eventually drowned out only by strings swelling in the background. A secret team, Steve Jobs tells his employees, has built a product that will revolutionize the way everyone listens to music. PARK CITY, Utah - The eagerly awaited biopic " Jobs" opens in 2001, when Apple's iconic co-founder arrives at Town Hall on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus with good news. ![]() ![]() CNET is spotlighting the review as the movie opens in theaters across the U.S. Editor's note, 8/15: This review was originally published in January after a screening at the Sundance Film Festival.
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