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Ashton Kutcher called the starring role scary and seemed to have an appropriate amount of reverence for the subject matter. However, reviewers seemed to have mixed feelings at best about the movie.
TNW’s Matthew Panzarino liked the movie and called it entertaining but inaccurate:
CNET’s Casey Newton, who was allowed to review this movie, didn’t like it:
This isn’t going to be the canonical Steve Jobs biography movie. Honestly, Jobs was such a complex individual that I can’t see one ever being made. But, as an impressionist portrait of a specific period in his life, it’s successful. Don’t go into it looking for complete verisimilitude or whip-crack dialog and you should like it just fine.
USA Today relayed some weirdness before the shooting:
More review snippets follow:
The diet, which the film claims Jobs adhered to, ended up sending Kutcher to the hospital with pancreas problems.
“First of all, the fruitarian diet can lead to like severe issues,” Kutcher said after the film’s screening. “I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie. I was like doubled over in pain.
“My pancreas levels were completely out of whack,” Kutcher added. “It was really terrifying … considering everything.[Jobs died as the result of Pancreatic Cancer]”
The Hollywood Reporter: Playing somewhat like a two-hour commercial covering the first 20 tumultuous years of Apple’s development, Joshua Michael Stern’s biopic of Steve Jobs is a passably entertaining account of the career of one of the twentieth century’s great innovators that doesn’t break any stylistic ground, hewing closely to public perception of the tech giant.
Cinema Blend: 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.
IndieWire: As a whole, the movie inevitably suffers from comparison to “The Social Network,” another recent biopic about cutthroat tech innovators that’s superior in every way. The David Fincher-directed movie burrowed inside the essence of competitive young brilliance and triumphantly explored how inspired minds engage in endless competition. “jOBS” renders the same forces through the Apple founder’s ongoing persistence without a modicum of depth. “We gotta risk everything,” Jobs tells his team early on. The movie could have taken that advice; the problem with “jOBS” is that it plays too safe.
The Verge: As expected, there are some liberties taken with Apple’s story and even / especially the representation of some characters — but the emotional resonance of Steve Jobs himself is convincing. It’s not revisionist history, and it’s not some greater parable about the human spirit. Jobs is a point-A-to-point-B story about a uniquely innovative thinker and ruthless businessman — one that had a notable and meaningful impact on the world. It’s a good film, but it’s also very “safe” — a familiar story that doesn’t try for a bigger picture.
