In a year crowded with product biopics — there are films about Air Jordan sneakers and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, of all things — “BlackBerry” offers something different: tragedy.
Like Romeo and Juliet, the BlackBerry is doomed to die from the very start.
The road to ruin, though, is a geeky good time — a “Revenge of the Nerds” without college sex jokes but with billions of dollars at stake and a groundbreaking invention that still affects much of the planet every day.
BLACKBERRY
Running time: 119 minutes. Rated R (language throughout). In theaters.
That would be the first smartphone, which 20 years ago quaintly meant a cellphone that could also send emails and do some rudimentary web browsing.
In 1996, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), Douglas Fregin (Matthew Johnson, also the director) and their one-room Ontario, Canada, company Research in Motion cracked the code to create the BlackBerry against all odds.
Their genius was twofold: They figured out not only how to build the mobile device, but also how to enable thousands of the same devices to coexist without crashing existing cellular networks.
And, although lacking the gravitas and moral conundrums of Facebook-centric “The Social Network,” Johnson’s dweebish film turns every one of these tech breakthroughs into a stirring victory worthy of “We Are The Champions.”
The quick and funny script by Johnson and Matthew Miller flirts with condensed-true-story cliché, but mostly comes off fresh.
The company’s rise and relatively rapid downfall begin with the entrance of Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), a product executive and hockey buff who joins Research in Motion to market their killer idea and get their finances in shape.
Balsillie is loud, brash and vulgar next to meek and measured Mike, and Baruchel (who low-key has one of the most recognizable and endearing voices in Hollywood) and Howerton play off each other ideally.
So do the likable actors playing their Geek Squad of inventors, who are living out the happy campus life they never had, complete with boisterous gags and no-work-allowed movie nights.
But as the company balloons — they partner with Cingular, their phone is named one of Oprah’s Favorite Things and PalmPilot attempts a hostile takeover — the group’s founding joy and much of the creativity go out the window in favor of desperate grabs at profit.
When they watch Steve Jobs give his Apple keynote speech announcing the iPhone — with its touchscreen, music and full internet browser — the look on their faces in Johnson’s muted-palate movie says it all: We’re screwed.
And it’s at that point, as sad inevitability sinks in, that the film’s initially cracking energy slips.
Revelations of mismanaged finances and legal improprieties are less involving or frankly interesting than the success story that came before them. Mike and Jim become distant, and we miss their funny “Odd Couple” sparring.
But that, in a way, mimics the crash-and-burn arc of the BlackBerry itself: from nearly half of cellphone users owning one in the aughts to exactly zero today.
For never was a story of more woe.
