Review of Jobs (2013) by Mario O — 04 Oct 2013

Watching Jobs, I was fairly entertained. The plot was a bit off, but that was saved by some great performances by leading man Kutcher and the Apple crew, as well as the fantastic soundtrack featuring big names like Cat Stevens.

Two things put me off, however. Firstly, Jobs wasn't really about Jobs, it was more like a dramatised documentary on Apple. It showed nothing about Steve's parents, or about Next or Pixar. Not to mention, you never see how Steve turned out after Apple's failure. Now that Apple is the world's most valuable company, you don't really see how it got there from watching this film. You need to already have heard the name "Steve Jobs" a lot to really understand this film.

But that wasn't what bothered me the most, however. A few days ago, I was thinking to myself: "I've never really heard of bad cinematography. Any amateur filmmaker can not mess up on the filming aspect." And what I thought should have been the case. With inappropriate zooms, horrible framing and far too many repeated camera tricks (reflection of screen on Jobs' eye), this film's cinematography marked the first time basic filmmaking has ever been a problem for me.

Nevertheless, this film was quite entertaining, and well-acted scenes really got this film from a 30 to a 60 for me.