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BlackBerry Movie Review

BlackBerry is a 2023 biographical dramedy film directed by Matt Johnson and starring Glenn Howerton and Jay Baruchel. It’s the best business product movie of the year.

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“Why would anybody want a phone without a keyboard?“

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It explores the incredible growth and tragic collapse of the world’s first smartphone and how it smashed huge enterprises before surrendering to Silicon Valley’s fiercely competitive companies. In a year that also saw the releases of the fun but standard ‘Tetris’ and annoyingly mediocre ‘Air’, BlackBerry easily came on top as the best business product biopic of the bunch.

It is such because it doesn’t glorify its figures and their product, but quite the opposite was the case here. This is after all a tragedy as we see the rise, but also the fall of this phone and the people who made it. The film truthfully posits that any business is ruthless, but the tech world is especially difficult to navigate and eventually its pursuit to reinvent and always stay fresh will become soul-crushing.

But the movie is so good because it never vilifies its subjects nor does it ever make fun of them, though the comedic tone is quite apparent throughout. It just depicts what happened with a very clear-eyed view refreshingly bereft of any agenda. And it’s also very funny as Howerton was reliably hilarious.

Yes, it was wonderful seeing Glenn Howerton of ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ fame get a strong movie role for once. He was typecast as you can see the crazy, maniacal Dennis in Jim, but nonetheless he delivered an incredibly entertaining and memorable performance as this unintentionally funny and neurotic businessman. All of his scenes were scene-stealers.

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I also really appreciated Jay Baruchel as Mike, the creator of the phone. He was quite memorable too and also very well cast. Everybody here did a good job, including Matt Johnson whose direction is confident and polished. The film’s handheld look was fitting given the subject matter and the movie offers a valuable, interesting look into the early history of smart phones. I just wished that it were shorter as there was no need to have a two-hour movie about such a simple story. This did result in some repetitious business scenes, but for the most part I was engaged with it.