Movie review: ‘Steve Jobs’

Whether you like Steve Jobs or not will have less to do with the man who gave us the iPhone and more to do with your feelings on Aaron Sorkin, the film’s celebrated screenwriter.

Sorkin (The Newsroom, The Social Network, The West Wing) revels in his style in Steve Jobs, a Sorkin sundae of glib, rat-a-tat-tat conversations that sound little like the way real people speak. It’s all topped off by the cherry of an electric performance from Michael Fassbender, who beautifully captures the Apple founder’s diffident persona.

Steve Jobs, based on Walter Isaacson’s book of the same name, largely takes place in the moments just prior to several important Apple product launches in the ’80s and ’90s. While the locations change, all have the feel of being backstage before the big show. At each event, Jobs is confronted by his past in the form of his former girlfriend, Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) and their daughter, Lisa (Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, Perla Haney-Jardine at various ages), whom Jobs claims isn’t his.

There’s also his Apple business partner Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), his mentor John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and his loyal assistant Johanna (Kate Winslet). Each forces him to deal with some ugly truth, and, boy, is there a lot of ugly to go around.

It’s a clever conceit that lifts Steve Jobs from being just another biopic. While the static nature of the setting and emphasis on dialogue theoretically constrains director Danny Boyle, whose films often have a wonderful sense of movement, he proves he can make the most of tight spaces, as he did in 127 Hours. The result is that Steve Jobs sometimes feels like Birdman lifted from Broadway and set down in the Bay Area.

While Fassbender is getting much of the glory and Oscar buzz, Rogen deserves recognition, too. As Wozniak’s meetings with Jobs become increasingly testy, ultimately exploding in a shower of acrimony, Rogen shows he can be much more than just a foul-mouthed goofball.

Still, Steve Jobs doesn’t dig much beyond the surface of the man in the title. Anyone who wants a fuller story, free from the heavy hand of Sorkin, should seek out Alex Gibney’s documentary from earlier this year, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.

Exclusive: AMC NorthPark, Dallas; Cinemark West Plano; opens wider Oct. 23

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 1:24 AM with the headline "Movie review: ‘Steve Jobs’."