I’m old, and admit that I didn’t jump on cellular devices when they first appeared. I was busy trying to find information for the students I worked with the hard way, in books.
I didn’t buy a Blackberry when they first came out either, or anytime thereafter. I waited around for iPhones.
So Matt Johnson’s new film “Blackberry” is all news to me, and I found it quite fascinating as it shows the world “the story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world’s first smartphone.”
It does show something that is still pretty common in business, though: the fraud and greed that can make innovators rush perhaps a bit too fast down the information superhighway.
Do geek inventors need a businessman to run the joint? Inventor Mike (Jay Barushel) doesn’t think so, but then again he doesn’t know how to sell stuff, only how to make it.
So along comes a businessman named Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who will do all the boring stuff but insists on being named CEO.
You can probably imagine the rest, especially if you remember the old Blackberry. And if not, you can be amused by the arguments and glitches along the way to success and then failure for this company.
It’s a good (or bad) old American story.
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