A Droning Tone Poem, Skip It: Why “Steve Jobs” Sucks

Written by Cole Smithey

“Steve Jobs” is all surface and punchlines, a boring film about an intensely unlikable conceptual inventor. Renowned film critic Cole Smithey says: Skip it.

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aNewDomain — For a movie that resists the traditional biopic formula of career high and low flashbacks “Steve Jobs” is a droning tone poem of a character study.

That the Apple CEO seems to have never digested the milk of human kindness supports our shared realization that capitalism’s ruthless quest for unlimited profit is headed to a dead end. In the movie, “Steve Jobs” suffers the company of people to whom he should be loyal, and he can’t even be civil. Talk about a wealthy skin flint.

This film is all surface and punch lines. In the movie, Jobs brags that other musicians play their instruments but he “plays the orchestra.” Where does he do that? It sure isn’t evident here. What is evident from this film is that he seems to have taken all of the credit for other peoples’ work.

As many of us know, it isn’t always the best idea to meet your heroes. I never had much desire to meet Steve Jobs. And after seeing this biopic, I’m glad I didn’t. I give this disappointing biopic a C plus.

My sleeper pick this week is “Victoria.” My guilty pleasure pick this week is “The Forbidden Room.”

My must-have DVDs this week are “A Room With a View,” “Breaker Morant” and “Gueros.”

For aNewDomain, I’m Cole Smithey.