Jobs (Movie Review)

We went to see Jobs on Saturday night with our older son who is interested in being an entrepreneur. I had heard that the reviews had been largely bad and didn’t have high expectations going in. I left the movie quite impressed and wanting more. 

It is easy to fault the movie for omitting many important parts of Steve Jobs’s life and accomplishments. But then again let’s keep in mind that he did accomplish way more than most and that Isaacson’s biography clocks in at 656 pages. In the end I think it was a strength of the movie that it only covered the time from the founding of Apple to Jobs’s return as CEO, essentially leaving out both Next and Pixar. I would happily see a separate movie about the second act and even one about the interim years from this team.

It is also easy to be critical of Ashton Kutcher on a kind of “how dare he play Jobs” knee jerk reaction. And while there may have been a couple of moments where I thought “oh its Ashton playing Steve” I didn’t have those more frequently than with any other highly recognizable actor (try Tom Hanks in anything). Instead I came away thinking that Ashton was showing just the right mix between hustle, serenity, aggression, intense focus that is the hallmark of many great founders. Ashton is an active investor in startups and spends a lot of his time with startup founders and I think that served him well in this role.

I am of course biased here. As I wrote when Steve Jobs passed away, I felt very moved despite having complicated feelings about Jobs’s role in our industry. I went back and read my post from then after seeing the movie and I think it captures this mix very well which is likely why I connected so well with it. If you work in tech or are starting / thinking about starting a company you should definitely see this movie (especially if you are not going to read any of the biographies).