We’ve recently entered a new world of cinema in which product placement is the entire rationale for a movie. No longer is it sufficient for a character to swig a well-known soft drink or flash an expensive watch – now the soft drink or the watch are the heroes of the film.
The lead characters in the BlackBerry story are a bunch of Canadian computer nerds with a start-up tech outfit called, believe it or not, RIM, which stands for Research In Motion. Given the eventual fate of this enterprise it’s only appropriate that the setting is Waterloo, Ontario. That company is more like a teenage boys’ dormitory, where the guys play computer games all day, watch movies, horse around, and somehow manage to do some work. Doug, in a perpetual hippy headband, is the ringleader; Mike is the introverted genius who lets the chaos swirl around him.All this will change when Jim comes on board, forcing the guys to turn their half-baked good idea about a phone with an email connection into a functional product.
Suddenly, it’s 2007, and Steve Jobs is spruiking a new product called the iPhone. For BlackBerry the apocalypse has begun. The tiny keyboard that was the BlackBerry’s greatest asset has become a liability alongside the iPhone’s chic full screen.as a comedy, but it’s the kind that finds viewers snickering through clenched teeth. Jim is both appalling and compulsively watchable as a ruthless, self-centred corporate psychopath, sitting in an office packed with tribal masks.
Emulating the amateurish nature of RIM, the film has a handmade feel, with grainy image quality and more handheld camera than the average home movie. I can’t say whether this represents an artistic choice or a strained budget. It imparts a nervy feel to proceedings some may find distracting.
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Source: FinancialReview - 🏆 2. / 90 Read more »