Review Roundup: First Reviews for Ashton Kutcher's jOBS Film

Related: JOBS

Casey Newton: CNET: The eagerly awaited biopic "jOBS" opens in 2001, when Apple's iconic co-founder arrives at Town Hall on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus with good news. A secret team, Steve Jobs tells his employees, has built a product that will revolutionize the way everyone listens to music. Before he can even show them the iPod, the employees have sprung to their feet, wild-eyed and ecstatic, and their thunderous applause is eventually drowned out only by strings swelling in the background. It's a scene that sets the tone for all that is to follow: for most of the film's two hours, "jOBS" rarely stops clapping for its subject.

Ross Miller, The Verge: The film doesn't shy away from Jobs's unflattering traits - including his resentment towards longtime girlfriend and his rejection of their daughter, Lisa. (The film later shows a brief scene where Jobs is cheerfully trying to wake Lisa up, one of the many quieter scenes that exposes the larger canon.) Jobs was notoriously prideful and arrogant, and that characterization is made abundantly clear.

Matthew Panzario, TheNextWeb: And much of the good stuff about jOBS, of which there is plenty, stems from the great work put in by the leads. Josh Gad, though he may have been working from an impressionist's idea of what Steve Wozniak was all about, translates with heart and warmth. Woz is not portrayed as a bumbling, clueless geek, but rather a very smart and mischievous man who knew exactly what he wanted from his partnership with Jobs, and exactly when he needed to end that partnership.

Katey Rich, CinemaBlend.com: After 10 days of watching Sundance films that wholly reject traditional Hollywood formulas, it's exhausting to see the work Joshua Michael Stern does here, leaning heavily on an overbearing score and soft lighting and scenes that lay out the film's themes as broadly as a corporate presentation. The Steve Jobs of this movie, who's constantly berating his employees to come up with something better than the status quo, would have hated the pat sentiments and dull direction of jOBS. Apple urged people to think different. jOBS does anything but.

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