LOOKALIKES: ASHTON KUTCHER, LEFT; STEVE JOBS, RIGHT

Beautiful portrait of an ugly man

Joshua Michael Stern has teamed up with Ashton Kutcher to do a biopic about the Apple Computer mastermind, Steve Jobs, but be warned: another version is coming in which Walter Isaacson's massive print biography of the man will be adapted by Aaron Sorkin of "The West Wing" and The Social Network. This then may be seen as a first draft, one in which the normally bland Kutcher, though his beautiful exterior can't be disguised, delivers some good mimicry of Jobs' voice and mannerisms and enacts with spirit his brutality and tantrums, and we get a very schematic portrait of the man. The focus is on Jobs' pioneering with Steve Wozniak in the development of the personal computer and the Mackintosh, and the first days of the company. Kutcher makes even the cruelest firing or cutout of a collaborator seem relatively graceful, but we are warned in the first sequence of what the man is like when his Atari boss tells him "You're an asshole."

Jobs is a complex figure. He was a techie, but he didn't focus on the techie stuff. The first Apples were designed by Wozniak (Josh Gad here). Jobs' focus was on concept -- a computer for everyone -- and marketing -- making it seem, in a favorite phrase of his, "insanely cool." He couldn't work with people, and liked to take all the credit, yet he certainly knew how to forge and galvanize a team. In the Jobs version of the world as seen here, technology is business, or at least it's hard to separate the two. Was Jobs a genius, or just a marketer with enormous drive (ready to battle IBM and Microsoft and the rest) who forged the most distinctive brand in the home technology universe?

Unfortunately no one else in this picture emerges as much more than cardboard and most of the actors feel like they're cameos even when they get more screen time. James Woods has a couple minutes early on as Jack Dudman, a prof at Reed where Jobs dropped out in the first year but hung around a while. Lucas Haas has some wistful moments as Daniel Kottke, who went to India with Jobs, but was one of those on his early team whom he cut out of the big bucks when the company got rich. Josh Gad as Wozniak stays around, but ceases to be important. Brad William Henke as Paul Terrell, who ran The Byte Shop, Apple motherboards' first seller, comes and goes. Dermot Mulroney hangs around all through but makes only a mild impression as Apple's first investor, eventually forced out. J.K. Simmons sounds tough but still seems ineffectual as the company's biggest funder and board member. Matthew Modine comes and goes as Pepsi promoter John Sculley, who comes to manage Apple marketing, locks horns with Job after seizing power, and leaves. There is simply not one other character in the film who stands up to Jobs, or seems to deeply matter to him. And that includes the woman (Ahna O'Reilly) he throws out of the house when she becomes pregnant by him, refusing ever to acknowledge his daughter.

This is, ultimately, a very unappealing man whom many are nonetheless very impressed by -- and whom Kutcher makes palatable. But photos show the young Jobs looked surprisingly like Kutcher. Moreover Jobs, despite his cruelties, was far from made of stone, and in fact cried a lot, and is seen doing so here. Jobs himself aside, the film has to be exciting at moments when you watch some young guys building things in a garage or asking for startup funds at a dining room table and know everyone in the scene is going to become a multi-millionaire, and their boxy early devices, over the next thirty years, are going to evolve into the way most of us work and communicate. That's pretty thrilling to see enacted. Besides, the power struggles and company ups and downs, though not tied clearly enough to specific technological and marketing events, are also exciting to watch. Given this combination, the two hours don't drag. But the film as a whole seems too schematic and simplified and too slanted toward Jobs' point of view. If he was as complex a man as everyone says, then to see that complexity we need to have a clearer picture of his mistakes. In this version, it's the other guys who make those.

Jobs, 122 mins., written by Matt Whiteley, debuted at Sundance. It opened in the US 13 August 2013.


WOZNIAK AND JOBS, 1976, TIME OF FIRST COMPUTER

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.