1 ½ stars
The story of the invention of the Blackberry phone, its phenomenal rise in the market place and its tremendous crash and burn only a few years after its launch would make a fascinating magazine article. It’s a little thin, however, for the plot of a two-hour movie.
Directed by Matt Johnson, who also stars in one of the film’s lead roles, Blackberry follows a rag-tag squad of nerds trying to bring their latest invention to market. Hopelessly inadequate in the realities of the business world, they fall under the spell of an arrogant, aggressive a**hole named Jim Balsillie (Glen Howerton), who drags them and their invention to the top no matter the cost.
The fact that nobody reading this still owns a Blackberry phone, and most won’t even remember what one was, proves that the story has a miserable ending. However, being rich white-collar criminals, the price they pay is disproportionally small.
The cast of inventors in Blackberry, led by Jau Baruchel as the head nerd, Mike Lazaridis, and Johnson as his sidekick Doug, does a decent enough recreating the atmosphere of what audiences think a software company looks like, with the developers playing video games and watching movies rather than working. Unfortunately, too many are running around acting nerdy with no character development to be interesting beyond the chaos they create.
On the other hand, Howerton encapsulates everything one imagines the dark side of the business to be all about. He’s arrogant, irritating, and impossible not to hate from the first scene he is in through the coda that wraps up the film’s end. It’s a one-dimensional performance, but that’s all it needs to be.
Although Baruchel and Howerton are believable in their parts, their hair is not. Baruchel looks like he’s wearing a grey fright wig left over from someone dressing up as an old man for Halloween. The ‘stylish’ haircut he gets to show how far Lazaridis has gone to the dark side is just as bad. Maybe worse. However, Baruchel’s follicle challenges are nothing compared to the frightening bald cap Howerton is stuck with. The top of his head looks fine, but the hair fringe surrounding his noggin looks glued on. Badly. It’s nitpicky but distracting enough to pull you out of the movie to stare at their lousy hair. Given the slight nature of the story, it’s a disturbance Blackberry can’t afford.
