Jobs MPAA Rating: PG-13 Entertainment: +2 Content: -3

Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons and Matthew Modine. Drama. Written by Matt Whiteley. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern.

FILM SYNOPSIS: The drama chronicles the story of Steve Jobs' ascension from college dropout to one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century, a creator of Apple and developer of the Mac. It details the major moments and defining characters that influenced Steve Jobs on a daily basis from 1971 through 2001.

PREVIEW REVIEW: There’s not a lot of dimension to the film, possibly due to the subject itself – Steve Jobs. He was obsessed and evidently saw him himself as an Albert Einstein brainiac. He’s pictured here as self-involved to the max and careless about the feelings of those around him. The hand-held camera bobs and weaves in an effort to generate tension, but we are given scene after scene with grown men crying and complaining that Jobs had changed. “Remember when we began…;” we hear that sentiment over and over. That’s about it.

As for Ashton Kutcher, he does a credible job, but it’s hard to bring something of interest to the role other than the countless times we see him walk, evidently imitating this unique gait Jobs possessed.

Steve Jobs was part of a creation that truly changed the world, both for good and bad. But as a man, this film paints him with the same brushstrokes as was done to Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Like the original Wall Street, The Social Network defined a generation of go-getters who finally got caught up in the same forbidden sins as any other generation, namely boundless pleasures of the flesh and the love of money. But those films contained magnetic performances and biting, witty and penetrating dialogue. The Social Network had a perceptive look at greed, power, and all things Internet, rightly proposing that our brave new world is not so much dominated by man’s intelligence, but his arrogance. Jobs merely gives us a portrait of an arrogant man.

If the film gives us an accurate portrayal of Steve Jobs, then he’s not someone I would have wanted to know. At the end of the film, which in itself is pretentious, I thought, “Who cares? I got a Dell!”

Preview Reviewer: Phil Boatwright
Distributor: Open Road Films