Sunday, June 2, 2024

BlackBerry (2023)

IMDb plot summary: The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.
Directed by Matt Johnson. Starring Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, and Matt Johnson.

BlackBerry is a biopic documenting the rise and fall of BlackBerry in the smartphone market. Jay Baruchel plays the tech genius coming up with all the nerdy solutions, while Glenn Howerton plays the ruthless businessman who knows how to get their product to the market. There aren't a lot of biopics in this genre that I find terribly compelling -- The Social Network is the only one I can think of, and that's because Fincher is a very engaging storyteller. This one is okay. It has some good, if broadly drawn, performances, and for me it's more interesting to see the fall of a company than its rise. But at its heart it still has all the expected beats of this kind of story -- the conflict between creating a good product and making money, the people who get left behind as the company gets big, the pitch meeting that changes everything. If this is a story arc you find particularly compelling, you could definitely do worse than this, but it isn't breaking new ground for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:
BlackBerry < Sarah, Plain and Tall
BlackBerry > Cars
BlackBerry < Wild Zero
BlackBerry > Sweet Kitty Bellairs
BlackBerry > American Hustle
BlackBerry > Konrad
BlackBerry < Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
BlackBerry < The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
BlackBerry > The Conformist
BlackBerry < Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
BlackBerry < The Ice Storm
BlackBerry < Sideways
Final spot: #2490 out of 3900, or 36%.

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