Jobs (Ashton Kutcher, Delmot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Matthew Modine, J.K. Simmons, Ron Eldard) – Almost everyone knows that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computers in the garage at Jobs’ parents house in 1976. And everyone knows how phenomenally successful Apple is as a corporation, having taken on IBM and becoming a computer juggernaut. Most people know that Jobs died recently from cancer that was almost certainly treatable if he hadn’t decided to try to beat it with herbal remedies and alternative medicine. His life’s story, an authorized biography, was told by journalist Walter Isaacson. Known as relentless, driven, visionary, egotistical, and difficult, Jobs sought to change the world. By almost all standards, he did. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now comes the movie of much of his life (without the death part). It covers his early days as a lost misfit who goes to work at Atari, asks his friend Wozniak to “save his bacon” on a project, and then uses a Wozniak garage project to invent the personal computer. It moves through the growth of Apple, his eventual loss of the company and his resurrection after the company loses billions of dollars under the leadership of former Pepsi CEO and his handpicked successor, John Skulley.
Ashton Kutcher gets the unenviable task of portraying and imitating an oft-seen and well-known legend. This is a creditable performance but certainly not a great one. Kutcher works hard to mimic Jobs’ hand gestures and his ungainly walk, leaning forward as he moves his tall, lanky frame. Physically, the resemblance is quite good. But unlike the great acting mimics, Kutcher never disappears; the audience never loses the actor in the character.
To the credit of first-time screenwriter Matt Whitely and director Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote), the story is well paced and captivating. It is playful in the early days of Apple’s creation yet deadly serious in the board of directors’ ouster of the mercurial but brilliant Jobs. We see Jobs’ evolution from lost soul with a marketing spark to a possessed nerd with an almost demonic drive. Kutcher handles it well within the confines of his talent.
Jobs is a worthwhile two hours if only as a prelude to reading Isaacson’s book. If you are an Apple disciple, you are likely both to love it and hate it. It won’t be deep enough for the true believers who would want more insight into the invention of the I-Pod, the I-Phone, and the I-Pad. But it will give you a healthy dose of Jobs, Wozniak (josh Gad in a spirited performance), and the handful of his pioneers who created a new world.