Current:Home > InvestA new film explains how the smartphone market slipped through BlackBerry's hands-LoTradeCoin
A new film explains how the smartphone market slipped through BlackBerry's hands
View Date:2024-12-24 07:57:55
Like a lot of people, I'm a longtime iPhone user — in fact, I used an iPhone to record this very review. But I still have a lingering fondness for my very first smartphone — a BlackBerry — which I was given for work back in 2006. I loved its squat, round shape, its built-in keyboard and even its arthritis-inflaming scroll wheel.
Of course, the BlackBerry is now no more. And the story of how it became the hottest personal handheld device on the market, only to get crushed by the iPhone, is told in smartly entertaining fashion in a new movie simply titled BlackBerry.
Briskly adapted from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, this is the latest of a few recent movies, including Tetris and Air, that show us the origins of game-changing new products. But unlike those earlier movies, BlackBerry is as much about failure as it is about success, which makes it perhaps the most interesting one of the bunch.
It begins in 1996, when Research In Motion is just a small, scrappy company hawking modems in Waterloo, Ontario. Jay Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis, a mild-mannered tech whiz who's the brains of the operation. His partner is a headband-wearing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-loving goofball named Douglas Fregin, played by Matt Johnson, who also co-wrote and directed the movie.
Johnson's script returns us to an era of VHS tapes and dial-up internet, when the mere idea of a phone that could handle emails — let alone games, music and other applications — was unimaginable. That's exactly the kind of product that Mike and Doug struggle to pitch to a sleazy investor named Jim Balsillie, played by a raging Glenn Howerton, from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Jim knows very little about tech but senses that the Research In Motion guys might be onto something, and he joins their ragtag operation and tries to whip their slackerish employees into shape. And so, after a crucial deal with Bell Atlantic, later to be known as Verizon, the BlackBerry is born. And it becomes such a hit, so addictive among users, that people start calling it the "CrackBerry."
The time frame shifts to the early 2000s, with Research In Motion now based in a slick new office, with a private jet at its disposal. But the mix of personalities is as volatile as ever — sometimes they gel, but more often they clash.
Mike, as sweetly played by Baruchel, is now co-CEO, and he's still the shy-yet-stubborn perfectionist, forever tinkering with new improvements to the BlackBerry, and refusing to outsource the company's manufacturing operations to China. Jim, also co-CEO, is the Machiavellian dealmaker who pulls one outrageous stunt after another, whether he's poaching top designers from places like Google or trying to buy a National Hockey League team and move it to Ontario. That leaves Doug on the outside looking in, trying to boost staff morale with Raiders of the Lost Ark movie nights and maintain the geeky good vibes of the company he started years earlier.
As a director, Johnson captures all this in-house tension with an energetic handheld camera and a jagged editing style. He also makes heavy use of a pulsing synth score that's ideally suited to a tech industry continually in flux.
The movie doesn't entirely sustain that tension or sense of surprise to the finish; even if you don't know exactly how it all went down in real life, it's not hard to see where things are headed. Jim's creative accounting lands the company in hot water right around the time Apple is prepping the 2007 launch of its much-anticipated iPhone. That marks the beginning of the end, and it's fascinating to watch as BlackBerry goes into its downward spiral. It's a stinging reminder that success and failure often go together, hand in thumb-scrolling hand.
veryGood! (14)
Related
- Fire crews gain greater control over destructive Southern California wildfire
- Sarah Ferguson shares malignant melanoma diagnosis just months after breast cancer
- Pro-Putin campaign amasses 95 cardboard boxes filled with petitions backing his presidential run
- Poland’s prime minister visits Ukraine in latest show of foreign support for the war against Russia
- Georgia House Republicans stick with leadership team for the next two years
- Jamaica cracks down on domestic violence with new laws aimed at better protecting victims
- Watch this incredible dog help save her owner after he fell into a frozen lake
- Simone Biles Supports Husband Jonathan Owens After Packers Lose in Playoffs
- Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul VIP fight package costs a whopping $2M. Here's who bought it.
- 5 firefighters injured battling Pittsburgh blaze; 2 fell through roof, officials say
Ranking
- Japan to resume V-22 flights after inquiry finds pilot error caused accident
- Protestor throws papers on court, briefly delaying Australian Open match between Zverev and Norrie
- NFL schedule today: Everything to know about playoff games on Jan. 21
- Surprise ‘SNL’ guest Rachel McAdams asks Jacob Elordi for acting advice: ‘Give up’
- Will the NBA Cup become a treasured tradition? League hopes so, but it’s too soon to tell
- USPS stamp prices going up: Forever first-class stamps will cost 68 cents starting Jan. 21
- How did Texas teen Cayley Mandadi die? Her parents find a clue in her boyfriend's car
- Rachel McAdams Supports Mean Girls' Reneé Rapp on SNL With Surprise Appearance
Recommendation
-
Statue of the late US Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon, is unveiled in his native Alabama
-
Alleged leader of the Gulf drug cartel, the gang that kidnapped and killed Americans, is captured in Mexico
-
Much of US still gripped by Arctic weather as Memphis deals with numerous broken water pipes
-
Massachusetts police officer shot, injured during gunfire exchange with barricaded man
-
Karol G addresses backlash to '+57' lyric: 'I still have a lot to learn'
-
Convicted killer attacked by victim's stepdad during sentencing in California courtroom
-
That 'True Detective: Night Country' frozen 'corpsicle' is unforgettable, horrifying art
-
Costco is selling dupe of luxury Anthropologie mirror, shoppers weigh in on social media