So it's Friday, and I'm sure some of you are really looking forward to watching Ashton Kutcher's new biopic about Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, it appears as though you might want to think twice about rushing out to the theater and seeing it, as the reviews are in and most aren't pretty.
As of the time of writing, Jobs' rating at RottenTomatoes sat at a disappointing 24 percent, with the user score coming in at 52 percent. The view was just as grim over at Metacritic, where the critical rating sat at 43 compared to the user score of 3.7.
The most acerbic review came from Slant, which awarded the film zero out of five stars. In the words of review R. Kurt Osenlund, "Reportedly hired because of his physical likeness to Jobs, Kutcher is in no way equipped to bear the dramatic burden this movie puts on him. Gruelingly sophomoric, the actor's performance borders on the unwatchable—a cobbled-together and wildly misguided mess of exaggerated tics, outsized emotions, and distracting vocal inflections in the key of an SNL parody."
Wired, however, had a decidedly more moderate stance regarding the film, as evidenced by Christina Bonnington's title "Watching Jobs Is Like Reading Steve Jobs for Dummies." According to Bonnington, "The good news: Jobs isn't terrible–far from it. Rather, it's a much more decidedly mediocre, big-picture look at the historically significant events in Steve Jobs' life. According to Steve Wozniak, the character of Jobs and the events of the film aren't 100 percent accurate ("One friend who is in the movie said he didn't want to watch fiction so he wasn't interested in seeing it"), but as a Hollywood interpretation of events, it makes for decent enough entertainment."
The L.A. Times tied Kutcher's interest in technology with his desire to play the role. As Mark Olsen writes, "Kutcher has apparently done quite well by himself as an investor in technology startups, helping get companies such as Skype and Spotify off the ground. Perhaps he sees himself as some Jobs-ian visionary in the tech world, but as an actor, he's still Ashton Kutcher. Though Kutcher does throw himself into the role with all he's got, trying to capture Jobs' distinctive walk and mercurial temperament, his performance comes off as an assemblage of mannerisms with no deeper feeling or understanding."
Yet the reviews aren't all bitter. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B, praising its ambition while frowning on its over-adulation. "The movie's fall-and-redemption narrative is generic, abstract. And maybe that's because the reason that this movie even exists — the notion that Steve Jobs is The One Who Changed Our Lives — has been, to put it mildly, a little overhyped. He didn't invent the personal computer, although he did refine it into something more seductively handy and even beautiful. Personally, I'm a devotee of Steve Jobs' products, but even as Jobs sticks to the facts of Jobs' life (and what a difficult person he could be), the movie gets a little too caught up in his legend."
Seen it yourself? Let us know what you think!
Follow this article's writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.
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