Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jay Baruchel, Jim Balsillie, Matt Johnson, Kelly Van der Burg, Martin Donovan
Intro:
… a hilarious and decidedly more fictionalised take on the tech biopic sub-genre that still says a lot about the sector and how desperation is the father of invention.
Post-Social Network, the increasing trend with corporate biopics tends to hinge on one major factor: Authenticity. Or, as most influencers are want to do, manufactured authenticity. Take a successful entity in a corporate sector, and give it an underdog makeover to make the stories of Ray Kroc (The Founder), Joy Mangano (Joy), or Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street) appeal to a demographic well below the subject’s tax bracket. 2023 has already seen a few of these in Tetris, The Beanie Bubble, and Air, but with the latest from Canadian indie favourite Matt Johnson (The Dirties, Operation Avalanche) has taken a considerably different (and better) approach.
Rather than trying to lionize the company and/or product in question, BlackBerry instead sticks to the original Social Network blueprint by presenting the geniuses behind the product as… well, rather unhinged individuals. Specifically, Research In Motion CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and co-CEO Jim Balsillie (Always Sunny’s Glenn Howerton), who both have the social grace of a unicycling elephant, but deal with that deficiency in diametrically opposing ways.
Lazaridis is the meek technician and hetero life-mate of Doug Fregin (Johnson himself, playing the role as the kind of nerd that even other nerds would shove into a locker), who knows his way around tech but not so much around people. He gets by on his ideas.
Balsillie, unknowledgeable with tech but shrewd in negotiation, is far from meek. Howerton’s performance shows him as a black belt in full-throated vitriol, whether he’s chewing out shy techies or invoking a classic viral video to shut down a boardroom meeting. He gets by on being the loudest guy in the room, even when he’s outside.
As fun as it is to watch these duelling personalities bounce off each other in order to bring one of the OG smartphones onto store shelves, there’s something unapologetically raw and geeky and… well, Canadian about this whole enterprise. It’s less about highlighting a specific tech company, and more about celebrating Canuck’s impact in a field dominated by Silicon Valley and South African nepo babies. It carries an authenticity that doesn’t feel like it was mass-marketed.
To that end, despite how annoying Doug can get (or maybe even because of it), he represents the kind of ‘take me as I am’ forthrightness that acts as an earnest starting place for the characters’ desire to bring sci-fi technology into the real world. As more of Balsillie’s razor-tongued approach to business rubs off on Lazaridis, it’s an ideal that he loses sight of.
BlackBerry adds to the modern canon of corporate biopics not by playing into base marketing tricks, but by peeling back the layers of hubris behind the notion of changing the world through a single commercial product.
Shot in an Office-esque mockumentary style, and continuing Matt Johnson’s habit of toying with reality as presented on-screen, it’s a hilarious and decidedly more fictionalised take on the tech biopic sub-genre that still says a lot about the sector and how desperation is the father of invention.
