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I am not sure if this movie even deserves the one star that I am giving to it. It sure as hell doesn't deserve it. The 0 star represents the whole line of movies that are unbearable and fall below this one. Jobs won't get you hooked to the story, while it had the best subject any director or producer could've dreamed of. And what a waste of time and money it was for me and for the people who put effort to make this. The 1 star also merely goes to the few scenes where it could put a fleeting smile on your face and that was it.
I was wondering why nobody was making a movie on Michael Jackson's life, but to the person who is working on it, please, for the love of God...take your time! There is no rush. The world doesn't need another Jobs. And if you screw that one up, you would find at your hands more pissed off people than you could imagine. Don't turn movies that are supposed to be a tribute to money-making excuses.
This movie looked like one of those lame-ass movie-like clips that talk shows make. You know...the ones where for example Oprah wants to talk about a person's life and they want to show a clip of what they have been through. So, they make them pretend they are reading something or are deep in their thought and just narrate them. This movie didn't have narration but I think maybe Morgan Freeman's could've saved it from becoming a sleeping pill. (No offense to Oprah by the way. Her work was amazing.)
It was almost like they had searched "Steve Jobs" on Wikipedia and tried to film the trivia with long shots and zoom ins and outs, as if this was an action movie. And tried to touch on "sensitive" parts of his life...the fact that he had been given up as a kid. Or had taken the part where (as we all know) he had taken calligraphy classes in college and used that experience to program different fonts into computer systems and tried to show it as a dramatic sequence in the film, down the road.
There are times where you don't have high expectations of a movie and then you see them and they get on your nerves but you can get over it soon. Since, you were not let down. You just watched something that could have been entertaining and wasn't. But in this case, we are talking about a biographical sketch of one of the people who had an immense role in changing the face of the world we are living in now and had an incomparable contribution to the progress of technology. The least you expect is a decent movie, deserving of its name but... UGH! I am just in awe of how one could screw something like this up. It takes a lot more to ruin a gem for a subject like this, than make a good movie.
And about Ashton Kutcher's Jobs. From the first scene where he walks in, there is no Jobs to be found in him. His only effort to mimic Jobs was his walk which I found really ridiculous. I think even Kutcher had been aware of how dumb his Jobs-like-walk looked mid-filming the movie but couldn't change it because they had already filmed a huge chunk of it. Of course, this is just a guess. And if he doesn't know this himself, then I have no comments! I found myself laughing at him slouching and this is wrong...to laugh at the scenes where you shouldn't. Throughout the movie all you could see was Ashton Kutcher (not Jobs) constantly changing facial hair. That's as far as he went in bringing this character into life.
You don't need to change your appearance to give an award worthy performance. Of course, in this case a believable one would've sufficed but when you remember Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny Cash, and remind yourself that he looked nothing like Cash and still gave an amazing performance...just keeps you wondering. (Looks like I've left the theater awe-stricken with all the wonder-ments I have in this review!).
I just looked up the director and found out that unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!) haven't seen any of his previous works. So, I can't give my verdict on his work. But I am wondering who trusted him with this project, as it seems like he is not an experienced one.
The fact that I slept in the theater can give you a hint on how disastrous and boring this experience was for me and can be for anyone who has got a slight sense of detection of a good movie.
This one is trailing way waaay behind Social Network, which I think I can allow myself to compare with, since it is a recent movie on a tech pioneer. And the fact that the subject in that movie has still got much of his life ahead of him, makes it the more "interesting" on how much material the Jobs guys must've wasted. David Fincher had turned a simple story to look like a rock concert! This shows the power of the writer, as I have always said. Writers are the underdogs of movies. They should be given more credit for their work. It's the power of the writer that can make a narcissistic, contemptuous character turn into a loveable one, where you root for, though he acts completely like an asshole. Speaking of assholes, what's up with the tech guys and acting the way day do?! But as I had mentioned in my previous post, these people's work should be considered regardless of their personality. And only be kept in mind not to make them idols...at least character-wise, for we owe them more than enough to make up for the way they have behaved in the past. We all have flaws. Some can be overlooked.
My suggestion to you is stay away from this and hope that somebody makes a tolerable remake. Or just (movie-makers) leave him alone! I know what you are thinking. As the name is big, you get tempted to watch it regardless of what anyone says. That's how I felt. Believe me when I say I hoped I had believe the reviews before checking it out for myself. There is 2 hours and $12 of my life I am never getting back and I wouldn't want that for any of my friends.
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