Jobs - 2 1/2 stars

Back in 1999, there was a great made for cable movie called Pirates of Silicon Valley.  This movie told the story of the rivalry between Apple and Macintosh.  Noah Wyle played Steve Jobs, and Anthony Michael Hall played Bill Gates.  This was a really good movie.

Jobs is not as good.  Ashton Kutcher does a good job playing Steve Jobs, but not as good as Noah Wyle.  The script skims over a lot of important things in the history of Apple.  Personally I was most disppointed that the way Apple got the technology for the mouse from Xerox was never even mentioned. 

The movie opens with Steve Jobs introducing the iPod in 2001.  Then it flashes back to 1974 when Jobs was a college student.  He and his friend Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) come up with the idea for the personal computer, the get an investor and start Apple Computers, and then the movie quickly flashes forward to a few years later when Apple is a successful company. 

One problem with the movie is at times it feels like the 'cliffs notes' version of the story.  There is a lot of stuff that could be in this movie, and they would need to do a miniseries to get everything in.  Maybe a 2 1/2 hour movie could get everything in, but not this movie. 

There were some good sequences in the movie, and the performances were pretty good.  But Josh Gad's beard was really strange.  Every time he was on screen, it was really distracting.  Also, the movie was too melodramatic.  Every time Jobs makes a speech, the scene is filmed with a crane so the camera can lift up over the crowd, and the music swells like it's the most dramatic moment of the 20th century.  This happens several times in the movie.  Also, Jobs cries too many times. 

I think the more you know about Apple and the history of the personal computer, the more you will get out of this movie, because then you can kind of fill in the missing pieces yourself.  This movie should have been a lot better.  I've read that Aaron Sorkin is working on his own Steve Jobs movie, and that the real Steve Wozniak is consulting.  I can't wait to see that movie.