Jobs (2013)  

BASIC

Those who read my reviews have probably come across me saying that I am not a big reader but if I do read it tends to be biographies and one biography I have read is on Steve Jobs. Now I know no one will have ever come across me saying this before but if you want to watch "Jobs" because you want to get an idea of who the man Steve Jobs was then don't, find one of those biographies and read it as you will get a much better picture of who Steve Jobs was.

Now the thing about "Jobs" the movie is that it is a potted history of Steve Jobs and as you would expect ignores certain parts of his life in order to cram it all in to two hours. As such we get to see things such as when at college Steve got into calligraphy, how at Atari as just an employee he not only over stepped the mark but his hygiene issues caused problems. We also see how Steve's demanding nature caused problems for the Apple company. I could go on but these are all dots in the life of Steve Jobs and we don't get anything to join the dots.

As such when "Jobs" is over you will be no wiser as to who Steve Jobs really was and will have sat through a two hour presentation of he history of Apple. Ironically considering how much Jobs was a perfectionist and into the beauty of design this movie lacks any of that. Oh it has style but a style which is basic and it just doesn't feel right.

What also sadly doesn't feel right is Ashton Kutcher as whilst he does his best to show how demanding Steve was and how he used people to get where he wanted to go he isn't convincing. The trouble is that Kutcher has a nice guy persona and so when he tries to do ass-hole it only ends up feeling forced. As for the rest of the cast, the surprisingly impressive list of names in supporting roles well they suffer because that potted history storyline doesn't permit them to create their characters.

What this all boils down to is that "Jobs" is a disappointing biopic because it doesn't do anything more than show various pivotal events in the life of Steve Jobs and Apple computers. It fails to connect those points with a narrative and in doing so fails to build any character depth. So if you want to know about Steve Jobs read a book on him as this movie fails to tell his story.