There may well be a dramatically satisfying movie in the tumultuous life of Steve Jobs — the technological innovator who founded Apple, was forced out, returned to revive the dying company into a global giant, and was revered as a visionary genius when he died, at age 56, in 2011.
Joshua Michael Stern’s earnest, overly worshipful biopic “Jobs’’ isn’t it — even if it employs Ashton Kutcher, an actor with an uncanny resemblance to Jobs who has gone to great pains to even move like his subject.
But his performance, like the movie, is all surface.
There’s little illuminating what made the man tick. Or exactly why a barefoot college dropout given to dropping LSD-turned-disgruntled Atari employee quickly becomes a demanding perfectionist who practically wills Apple’s first personal computer into existence.
Instead of showing, there’s reams of expository dialogue, and Jobs spouting marketing slogans, beginning with an opening prologue set in 2001 when he introduces the iPod to his awed staff as “a tool for the heart.’’
The depiction of Apple’s early years comes dangerously close to an infomercial, with the barest glimpses of Jobs’ adoptive parents (his anguish over abandonment by his birth parents barely alluded to) and the girlfriend he dumps when she announces she’s pregnant (he initially denies paternity of the daughter, who he later acknowledges).
The makers of the Mark Zuckerberg biopic “The Social Network’’ did a terrific job of exploring the interplay between their subject’s drive and his personal demons.
But the filmmakers here prefer to focus on the not-always-compelling story of how a disgruntled board member (J.K. Simmons) and Jobs’ own handpicked CEO (Matthew Modine) together forced his ouster from Apple in 1985 after lengthy arguments over budgets and business strategy centering on the Macintosh.
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Jobs agrees to return as a consultant to the near-bankrupt company in 1996, and is quickly asked to become CEO, which is where the story ends — seven years before he’s diagnosed with cancer.
Unlike Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney is solid as a major early investor in Apple whose role on the company’s board increasingly puts him into conflict with Jobs.
But the real acting honors here belong to Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak — the geeky genius inventor of the Apple 1 — who leaves the company because of his friend’s sometimes callous treatment of his most loyal workers.
“Jobs’’ amounts to, at best, a Cliffs Notes version of the man’s early life. If you want the real story, you’ll have to read Walter Isaacson’s fascinating 2011 biography, which would make a much better film than this one.