Review of Steve Jobs (2015) by Axet — 26 Oct 2015

What a wreck! You know how the book is always better than the movie except in a handful of cases such as: "Psycho", "The Godfather", "Jaws", maybe "The Shining"… here the book (though a biography not a novel) is about a thousand times better. The first big mistake was Sorkin writing the script. He's not a moviemaker but a playwright and one who is in love with his own concocted witty banter and not so much interested in a good movie. It worked well for "The Social Network" but dreadfully does not here. The subject is highly verbal yes, but this film is way too much so and a director like say Polanski would have smartly thrown out half of the wall to wall dialogue.

Danny Boyle's (a director I have always liked) stabbings at a cinematic treatment of the stagy script do not work including the use of grainy film stock in the beginning and subliminal cuts to get in back story that appear as errors. These choices are a complete blunder. Michael Fassbender is an excellent actor, but incredibly I might prefer the lousy Ashton Kutcher whose portrayal in the lame "Jobs" was at least a better and more accurate overview. Kate Winslet plays an annoying contrivance of a character that is ridiculously unbalanced to the real story. And what can you say about the casting of a fat slob of a talentless over-paid lucky as **** phony actor playing Steve Wozniak? They could have cast any fat slob with a beard and that actor (or non-actor) would have done just as well or better.

The worst move of all was the silly Hollywood emphasis on Steve Job's illegitimate daughter who takes over the whole story! A story that could have and should have been epic! What about his other kids for that matter? What about his wife who he didn't find until late in life and really might have saved him from himself in many ways? The film's focus is narrow and dumb, and that is said knowing full well that dramatic license and drastic cuts and economies must be made in adapting such a book and life. This movie feels very small while something like "The Social Network" felt big. I read the biography in whole, and any other iteration imaginable would be superior to this film. Isaacson must be hugely disappointed in this hack job.