One-Dimensional Portrait of an Iconic Figure

Rating: 4/10 (6 February 2016)

Michael Fassbender does a wonderful job in portraying the film's protagonist, it is true, but JOBS is not a good movie.
To say that Aaron Sorkin's screenplay incorporates clichés is something of an understatement. Kate Winslet spends most of her time looking pained as Jobs's long-suffering personal assistant, as he refuses to listen to anything she says. As his daughter Lisa, Perla Haney- Jardine has the unenviable task of trying to portray a character attracted to her father yet unable to get close to him. The script has a climactic reconciliation sequence between the two of them taking place on a roof on a sunny San Francisco day - the scene is deserted except for the two of them. All we need is a syrupy Miklos Rosza score and we are right back in Hollywood weepie territory.
Danny Boyle's directorial style is notable for its repetitiveness. Most of the action takes place backstage at the various theaters where Jobs launched his products, and consists of lengthy tracking shots as the characters walk up and down corridors, apparently unwilling or unable to keep still.
Jobs is portrayed as a thoroughly unsavory character, someone so wrapped up in his self-belief that he manages to alienate just about everyone. This is fine; but one wonders why his closest acolytes choose to stay close to him. The reconciliation scene between Jobs and John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) is pure corn: no one who had been treated as badly as Apple's former CEO would have tolerated such petulance, even from one as talented as Jobs.
The movie is interminably long and talky; Fassbender delivers most of his lines in a shrill whine, which becomes extremely tiring after a while. JOBS is the kind of movie that will garner Oscar nominations, but is in truth not very good.