Matt Johnson's rather John McEnroe-esque "Doug" rather stole this tale of what was literally a tech-tonic shift in how we used our mobile phones. He, together with his boss Mike (Jay Baruchel), has been working with a small team of geeks to develop a mobile word processor that can send messages by text and email. It's funding they lack and it's during a fairly flawed presentation that they encounter "Jim" (Glenn…

“Blackberry” is a film about the failure and spectacular collapse of the world’s first smart phone. Adapting Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff’s book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry” for the screen, director Matt Johnson creates an entertaining look at contemporary history with his tale of the rise and fall of a revolutionary gadget that changed the…

The script seems to be written mostly from the perspective of Jim Balsillie, a businessman that was co-CEO of Blackberry, while engineers take a backseat. This follows the general tendency in film to glorify businessmen, treating the people who actually conceptualize, design and implement the products (i.e., do the core work that is societally useful) as mere sidekicks. The general timeline is right and many of…

I kept hearing people say this movie was actually not bad for a movie about BalckBerry, and you know what, they were right! Glenn Howerton plays an incredibly entertaining psycho as always. Jay Baruchel does the befuddled muppet thing with aplomb. And then the doofus sidekick guy who's actually more insightful than others give him credit for also does a good job. It's an easy mindless entertainment watch. Spoiler…