Movie Review: BlackBerry

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B+

An excellent movie based on the creation and fall of the BlackBerry phone. 

I admit that before seeing this film, I knew pretty much nothing about the behind the scenes story of the BlackBerry phone. Because of this I cannot say for sure how much of this story is true or not, but what I can say is that it felt like a true-life story as I was watching it. Much of this is due to how naturally this story flowed and how real the major three characters feel. Though this film has a quirky and geeky sense of humor at times, it never sacrifices its believability. This is achieved by the fact that the humor comes from the quirkiness of the characters and is oftentimes used to emphasize the major story points of this film. For instance, when RMI is still a little company, this humor is quite prominent but as the company grows this humor becomes less prominent emphasizing how the relaxed atmosphere and the world these geeks knew is disappearing from view. This change is also shown greatly through one of the main characters himself. This character's whole outlook is affected greatly by fully entering into the corporate world. As the film goes on, he is clearly becoming a very different person. Yet this is done in such a gradual and believable way that you never second guess that this is the same person. This change is also held together by a wonderful performance by Jay Baruchel, who captures not only the character's change by highlighting the character's own self-awareness of the change. There are multiple scenes where you can see the character realizing how he is changing but feeling that he has no choice but to become what he is becoming. This is a complex and hard to convey idea, but Baruchel does it so well not through dialogue but through his performance. This film also highlights its sense of realism through the visual filmmaking. Director Matt Johnson, who has only directed two feature films prior to this, gives this movie a documentary like feel, especially in the earlier scenes. For much of the time this enhances the feeling that you are watching the real people, instead of actors. 

There is still some stuff here that doesn't quite work. The quirky humor can be quite hit and miss, with some of it being laugh out loud funny and some of it falling completely flat. There is also that outside of our three main characters, none of the other characters ever feel real, because they come off as little other than simple stereotypes. Also while I like a lot of the visual filmmaking there are times when the amount of camera movement can become distracting. 

All in all this is a really good film, and it overcomes its flaws easily.