Jobs (2013) is a biography drama based on the life of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Ashton Kutcher stars as the charismatic and fiery-tempered Jobs who encounters numerous social conflicts in his path to designing the most advanced and personal piece of technology of its time. This film grazes over a good deal of stereotypically moral themes including: the effects of ambition on friendships, the impact of persistence on the completion of a dream, and the influence of familial relationships on character. In this film, Jobs’s path to success with his brainchild is loosely documented starting from Apple’s inception. Overall, the film is too superficial to provide any real insight into the life of Steve Jobs. The scenes of his private life as a young man in college and as an older father of two do little to elaborate on what is already known about him in mainstream culture.
Joshua Stern, director of Jobs, incessantly references Jobs’s resistance to the flow of society. The movie opens with a young Jobs, now a college dropout, sleeping amongst busy college students. When the dean of Reed College tries to convince a barefoot Jobs to attend college, Jobs simply leaves. Scenes depicting Jobs’s spiritual transformations through ex-monk- instructed calligraphy classes and trips to India, feel too impersonal in their montage-presentation. Perhaps it is because exceptional intellectuals are depicted similarly, but Jobs tastes like a reheated dish of The Social Network (2010). Jobs’s loss of his closest allies directly parallels Mark Zuckerberg’s (played by Jesse Eisenberg) loss of his most trusted friends. The movie goes on to depict Jobs becoming more hands-on with the development of Apple. As the movie goes on, we see that Jobs engages in various power struggles with his board members. This leads to strained relationships between himself and his partners. Simultaneously, Jobs deals with the clash between his drive to create the future of technology and its strain on his personal life.
A good portion of this clash is overpowered by the degree of the emotions expressed. At times, the grandiose delivery of the sobbing and screaming distract the viewer from fully appreciating the dimension to which these scenes give Jobs. Toning down the concentration of sadness and anger would have greatly improved the effect of the scenes. These scenes take away from the nuanced performances of Jobs’s character. The scene where Jobs experiments with hallucinogenic drugs falls short of expectations because it seemed as if the scene was placed only to humanize Jobs. The stereotypical interpretation of an intoxicated adolescent does not give very much leeway for a meaningful conveyance
of Jobs. At later parts in the film describing Jobs’s life as a married man, Kutcher overplays his role as the loving father. The way Jobs asks Lisa— his once-estranged daughter—if she would like breakfast and the way he interacts with her are too surreal even for a fictional work like Jobs. These awkward portrayals of Jobs make Jobs feel like it could have been about anyone, not just Steve Jobs.
The characters straddle the fence between mediocre and terrible. The two main focuses of the movie, Steve Jobs and his friend Josh Gad (who is played by Steve Wozniak) both undergo the traditional hero’s journeys. Jobs and Gad both start out as social outcasts and later become computer enthusiasts. Both endure rejection from their intellectual peers only to later come back in triumph using the ideas they were ridiculed for. Jobs is a character with which the audience can sympathize, but the more the screenwriters make Jobs try to appear human, the more they exaggerate his human-like qualities. In scenes where he was upset, he was screaming. In scenes where he was saddened, he was hysterically crying. This in turn made Jobs’s character seem unrealistic.
As for thought-provoking ideas that are addressed by this film, there seem to be none. The ideas that are portrayed include clichéd themes such as the suffering of friendships due to the pursuance lofty goals. This is something that is to be expected. Even before watching the movie, viewers know that Jobs cannot have many friends with the status that he has. What he has chosen to sacrifice in order to attain this position is not revolutionary news. The film briefly mentions the fact that Jobs does not live with his birth parents. It is suggested that this could be the reason for his motivation, but any attempts to pursue this idea are not continued. The die-hard attitude Jobs has is illustrated in the perspective of an outsider looking in. If there is take-home message, it is that Jobs is persistent.
Jobs (2013) is not inundated with praise with good reason. Although the subject of interest is rather entertaining, the execution of the story is fairly mundane. The adjectives used to describe Kutcher’s portrayal of Jobs may be delusional. The character feels far from what Jobs should have been depicted as, which was a unique individual and who happened to own Apple. The reason factual accuracy and nuance of persona are so important in this case, is that Jobs is an internationally renowned symbol of the new age of technology. If there is anyone who deserves an accurate portrayal, it is Jobs. The movie was not terrible to watch. Jobs’s character just seemed outlandish. The overused ideas and aggrandized acting took far too much away from the story. The movie is—aside from its interesting choice in subject—quite lackluster.