Thank God It's Too Early to Ruin Christmas

Rating: 2/10 (28 October 2015)

It's difficult to review a film about a subject and time which I was so close to. So I tried, I really tried to suspend disbelief, give the writers of this turkey a fair amount of artistic license, try and concentrate on the positive, the sets, the costumes, lighting, sound, acting.... good God, anything! But there is nothing, nothing good about this episodic CBS drama less a cadaver and FBI task force cut to movie length I was charged $10 to see. For a moment though, I would like to comment on just how historically inaccurate this film is. Aaron Sorkin took the reality of one of the most interesting characters of our century and decided that that person, even though he had been commissioned to write his story, did not fit the cookie cutter, It's a Wonderful Life/ A Christmas Carol, mold he needed to appeal to his core audience of what appears to be 55 - 70 year old women, so he manufactures a thoroughly codependent female assistant whose quiet strength serves to tame the savage beast of conceit and misogyny. Boy, am I just getting started. I will not comment further on the factual stretches of this script, except to say has this been a Revolutionary War epic, Ben Franklin would have consulted Abraham Lincoln to determine how to react to King George's indifference. It's that bad, but unlike Mr. Sorkin, I have enough respect for the current colleagues and friends of the late Mr. Jobs to further plunder their personal history. Amadeus was a good film, it was entertaining and sad, funny, and a million other things, but it was never pandering, shallow, and embarrassing to all involved. To say Steve Jobs is as important to history, and as compelling a character as Mozart is not a stretch in my opinion. Mr. Sorkin, took this source material, and presented us with a very special two-hour West Wing/ Newsroom, what an absolute shame, and the fact that the filmgoing public with all the research at their fingertips at any time accepts this as alright, that they allow themselves to be duped into, to steal a Sorkism, a halcyonic state, is the biggest tragedy of all.