iShout - even Fassbender & Winslet can't undo Sorkin's Mean Spiritedness

Rating: 1/10 (26 December 2015)

For reference: my TV favs include Silicon Valley, Halt & Catch Fire; love Battlestar remake & Blade Runner. I live in a household that argues the merits of Windows vs Apple - and I'm not the Apple fan and generally find tech cults kinda silly.
That said... After this iShout-Fest pretending to be a movie, my sympathy is with Steve Jobs. Odd, as the whole narrative tone attempted to hit the audience on the head to achieve exactly the opposite.
God Sorkin's didactic, shouty voice overwhelms this movie like an imposing, mean-spirited, nit-picky evil force. Sorkin is not known for subtlety, his new found Hollywood clout is also clouding his estimation of his true weight. Reality Distortion Field - what he accuses Steve Jobs for - has gotten to him.
God Sorkin's West Wing was special because then, the fast-talk-fest style thing was new. It got old quickly when he repeated the same formula on everything else. I remain neutral with his mediocre style until he first sunk is invasive, poisonous, blood-thirsty fangs into Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Now this.
For two hours we are presented with shouty, hard-hitting, captain obvious, unrealistic, GRATING LOUD ARGUMENTS - between (oh look isn't he so arrogant) Jobs and his (long-suffering) PA; (recalcitrant) Jobs with (poor little superpower) partners; (insensitive) Jobs talking down at his (poor little deprived) daughter.
The shouting matches ALWAYS take place back stage - always TENSE because Some Important Invention Is Going Gold and The Fans Are Cheering For Their Hero. Then rinse, repeat act 1 act 2 act 3.
Why make the movie go monotonously from act 1, 2, 3? Because Look God Sorkin's Script Formula Is So Clever Genius It Has To Be Made Obvious In Order To Be Mythologized as another Sorkin Style?
How else to get the attention off the OVER-RATED fashionable media darling stars of the show so people will notice THE REAL STAR behind the scene, the unglamorous greasy "real people" tech-genius who does all the work?
Steve Jobs is so scolded OMG, even his grooming and fitness regime is being scrutinized and reframed as "look he's so vain" unlike shapeless Jeff Bridges and scruffy Seth Rogen. Sorkin's visualization of decent = amorphous and amoral.
And this is how Sorkin viewed an American hero, an artist-genius entrepreneur visionary of our time. Goodness, I'm not even American. Jobs may have been a flawed human who took for granted a few people close to him but he is not answerable to the whole human race for his personal failings. As if people haven't been bitching about Jobs's narcissism enough. As if that is the only legacy of a remarkable industrialist worthy of commenting in a multi-million production.
Sorkin's HIJACKING of an exceptional man's private life is so mean and petty, so invasive, merciless, smug, so unforgiving and high-handed, so condemning and god-like, so insulting of audience intelligence, so cringe-inducing esp during a particular Wozniak Jobs public stand-off.
I feel so sorry for Steve Jobs that I feel bad now I mocked my other's half's iEverything product tech specs. It's that bad.
Selfless chameleon Fassbender's amazing acting and Kate Winslet's equally sincere and generous offering managed to keep the horribly plastic formulaic script and painfully-contrived dialog bearable. After the movie ended, I asked, wow, what just happened. That's it? That's all the whole multi-million producer-writer team have to say about a man that define not just a generation but a renaissance? Family is Very Important? Really? Sorkin? America needs to be told THAT?
Hating and smearing Zuckerberg hasn't satiated Sorkin's blood lust apparently, all tech superstars are over-rated media darlings and private tyrants with awful domestic habits and must be brought to their knees and be publicly humiliated and accused with no evidence and bowed before god Sorkin.
Yes throwing rocks at super rich genius is easy. What's next? Sorkin tearing down Elon Musk or Bill Gates for some horrible crime of humanity against their neglected and deprived loved ones and co-workers?
After all this shameless god-playing charades Sorkin remains a third grade, one note pony screenwriter. Throw a rock on LA street you'll hit a TV writer with more flair and depth and less little meanie vengeance in his heart.
1 for Sorkin's shamelessness and megalomania. Recommended only if you're a Fassbender or Winslet fan with high tolerance for ridiculous writing and high-handed directorial tone.