jOBS (2013)

To be released on DVD, etc, Rated M, offensive language, profanity. Starring Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad. Director Joshua Michael Stern.

Rating: 2/10

Apple computer creator Steve Jobs made life easier or more complicated, depending on your liking or aversion to computer gadgets, a central focus of modern living.

The opening of jOBS buries us in Jobs’ mystical ecstasy after he drops out of college (typical of the 1960s). He looks to have found his reason for being in these drug-induced ‘religious’ experiences, but he makes you wish you didn’t have an apple computer.

Soon after, Jobs cons a friend into sharing his knowledge and skills for less than they’re worth and gets the benefits of selling a game he barely invested in.

The naïve accomplice gets his deserved comeback when he tells Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) – after he’s become CEO – that Jobs should get a life.  

Along the way, Jobs’ girlfriend gets a cruel awakening and an employee gets fired for not sharing the vision of the company. Too bad, Steve Jobs is coming. 

Kutcher as Jobs is sometimes unintentionally funny and he gets under your skin so often that he’s occasionally compelling for all the wrong reasons.

When Jobs gets the tables turned on him, however, this isn’t a pleasant movie. 

It’s a superficial Steve Jobs in this biography and we don’t really know if that’s intended or just the way it turned out. But when Jobs is ‘taking time out’ you get to see a softer, mellow man who is married with children. 

He is content and his calmness seems to translate into a sage-like man who imparts wisdom for living.

The end result is a message for the young and young-at-heart that never gets to the heart of the matter or the man. Just do your dream, even if you don’t spare others in your wake. It will one day make you happy.

His confidence is assuring but it’s a sad commentary if you’ve only lived for that.

Peter Veugelaers’ first published devotion is scheduled for 2014 in the quarterly devotional The Secret Place (Judson Press).