On the spur of the moment, it looked like BlackBerry might dominate the smartphone market. First, they figured out how to use the existing data network to put email in the hands of users. Of course, all of this was crammed into a device that's about as thick and unwieldy as French toast: too big for most people's pockets and downright awkward to hold to your ear. However, Canadian electronics company Research in Motion revolutionized how cell phones work and what they could do, making their co-founders billionaires. So what happened?
Crazy, irreverent and loved, from the display of the BlackBerry pants and the subsequent disappearance of "that phone I had before I had an iPhone", as one character put it. Directed by Matt Johnson, the renegade fake doctor behind the 2013 Slamdance winner The Dirties and the Fake Moon Landing Project Avalanche, from a script he co-wrote with his long-time collaborator Matthew Miller, this sly satire of the world of technology. is freely extrapolated by journalist Jackie. McNish. and Sean Silkoff's book Loss of Signal, making this wild ride something of one of his favorite movies.
The oft-quoted, brutal dialogue is the inspiration for Aaron Sorkin and David Mamet (whose characters were called "Glengarry Glen Ross"). “I'm going to keep taking pictures until this room is filled with kids playing with whistles,” Michael Ironside laments at one point, playing the bulldog of the company's CEO, apparently the only adult in the room. Later, forced to use pay phones after BlackBerry overloaded the network, Glenn Howerton exclaims, “There are three reasons why people buy our phones. … They are. you work!" Lines like this pair well with cinematographer Jared Raab's haunting and emotive style, which offers a cross between The Office and The Loop, shot in parking lots and messy workplaces.
No one would mistake it for a documentary, and yet Johnson uses voyeuristic cues that create a sense of presence in the audience. When the cast Johnson assembled doesn't seem old enough to remember the BlackBerry, it finally works for the movie. Canadian actor Jay Baruchel still has the fluffy beard of a teenager, and it's a rare chance to play BlackBerry super-inspirer Mike Lazaridis with his silver-haired Julian Assange. Johnson chose to portray RIM founder Douglas Fregg as a headband-wearing "stupid" (and trustworthy in the comics) who seems more concerned with starting businesses than his friends.
And then It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Howerton, MVP of the handsome ensemble, shaved his head to play the bald and unadorned Jim Belsilly. Like a shark in a wading pool, Howerton delivers a performance that can boost a career or cause audiences to rethink an actor's potential entirely. Jim's ruthless business instincts are in direct contrast to the nerd's defiant approach. He agrees to quit his job (technically he's already been fired and has no choice) and makes RIM keep his promise, something Mike and Doug try to convey during a random induction hour in the film by quoting the high school shop teacher. : "The computer, anyone who enters the phone will change the world."
Driving around in a beat-up Honda hatchback, the couple, and the rest of the RIM team, look like little adults who can't clean their own rooms. They're too loud and immature to focus on the task at hand, wasting precious time playing Command & Conquer in an office where piles of broken modems line the walls and someone has shoved a plunger into their computer screen. Rarely has a movie captured the spirit of creative chaos that characterizes Silicon Valley, though it's important to note that RIM's rise and fall took place half a continent away in Waterloo, Ontario.
It's a Canadian story, told by Canadian filmmakers who treat all this madness as a matter of national pride. It's certainly full of arrogance, from Mike's disbelief that consumers would prefer a device without a keyboard (one of the iPhone's many design improvements) to Jim's illegal callback strategy to drive engineers away from companies. rivals like Google. But BlackBerry is surprisingly charitable to the parties involved, acknowledging that these visionaries, while inventing, managed to change the way the world communicates. Taking up a social media page, you can follow these two best friends on the phone as they try to maintain their friendship amid the financial difficulties of running a tech company.
Avoiding the pitfalls of dryness or technique, Johnson fast-forwards to times when the company was under a lot of pressure to deliver, like a late-night session to develop a prototype that he could present to Bell Atlantic. "BlackBerry" shows Mike and his RIM crew raiding an electronics store, buying pocket calculators and Speak & Spell toys to imitate a clunky demo model, which Mike later forgets in the booth. Saul Rubinek patiently listens to Jim's speech, then responds, "You're not a technician, are you?" It's even funnier when Palm boss Carl Jankowski (Cary Elwes) threatens to take it over and Jim tries to raise the stock price to prevent that from happening. The frantic montage is reminiscent of something out of Martin Scorsese's Wall Street, or better yet, The Wolf of Wall Street.
Some people look longingly at the BlackBerry and how it allows them to write emails with their thumbs. It's melancholy for those who say they're nostalgic about late payments and being asked to record to VHS tapes, akin to Blockbuster doing a mini-comeback. For the most part, the BlackBerry was a primitive product, until something better came along, namely Apple's iPhone. And while Johnson's films argue that other factors may have contributed to his demise, it's hard to ignore that the company broke new ground. At least the movie looks fresh, which makes the geeky story more fun than it should be.
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