STORY: The film traces Steve Jobs’ meteoric rise from a Northern California hippie to the co-founder of Apple Inc, one of the most iconic innovators of our times. REVIEW: The opening scene is riveting. The year is 2001. Clad in his famous black turtleneck and blue jeans uniform, you see Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) introducing an Ipod in a staff meeting. Soon after, flashbacks follow and you are transported to his early life at college, visit to India and how he brought about the personal computer revolution. To make a biopic on Steve Jobs (the man revered across the world for revolutionising technology) with Ashton Kutcher (former model who has Punk’d celebs, acted goofy in most films) playing the lead was always a tough one to pull off. While Ashton may not be in the league of Hollywood‘s celebrated method actors, much to our surprise, he not only resembles Jobs but is competent and sincere in his attempt at portraying the ground-breaking entrepreneur.

It’s the forgettable background score, unimaginative story-telling and a dreary screenplay that makes the film look tedious. While it’s unfair to expect the filmmaker to include almost every aspect of Jobs’ turbulent life in his 120- minute feature film, we wish he’d have invested more in offering us a deeper insight into the man behind Apple and his associates. Instead, we are made to skim through Jobs’ work history in an episodic manner with disjointed scenes that fail to arouse emotion. The film draws a lot from The Social Network, especially when it comes to portraying Jobs as the ‘flawed human being’, equation with board members or fallout with friends. What worked for the Facebook film however was Aaron Sorkin’s solid screenplay. It all moves at a sluggish pace here, making the plot seem ambiguous. Jobs also goes on to state the obvious, which exposes the fact that a little more research was required. We already know about Jobs’ passion for innovation, habit of randomly firing employees or how it’s always lonely at the top. His rivalry with Bill Gates is mentioned way too casually, while the rest, personal life, marriage, Pixar, health issues, management mottos, the launch of Iphone, are all left out. Jobs is an ambitious but an incomplete effort. It’s ‘not bad’ but that’s certainly not what Steve Jobs stood for.