KSanders writesDispatches from the 2023 Chicago Critics Film Festival: “BlackBerry”

by Kyle Sanders

Hello fellow moviegoers, I have some exciting news! The 10th Annual Chicago Critics Film Festival is taking place this week and yours truly will be reviewing it!

While this isn't my first time attending, this IS my first time covering, and what an exciting time to start as this festival celebrates TEN YEARS of local film critics actively working to "unite filmmakers, art, and an audience willing to embrace both!"

This year, Chicago critics have selected thirteen features, five documentaries, one animated feature, and fourteen shorts for you to choose from--some of which I'll be reviewing here!

To open this year's festival, CCFF chose the upcoming release BlackBerry, Matt Johnson's "fictionalization" recounting the origins of the world's first smartphone. Beginning in 1996, this comedy-drama traces the early roots of Mike Lazaridis' (Jay Baruchel) and Douglas Fregin's (Johnson) mobile game changer and their fateful partnership with business shark Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). Jim has the brawn, Mike and Doug have the brains...so why not make lots of money?

What follows is your typical rags-to-riches story, as Jim's cunning business savvy has Mike and Doug racing against time to invent the first phone that can successfully manipulate the "free internet" floating out there like some version of The Force. Jim needs a tangible prototype to impress investors, but Mike wants technological perfection. "Perfect is the enemy of good," Jim says to the inexperienced duo, who'd rather play Doom and host movie nights with their fellow greasy-faced geeks.

Jim sees an opportunity to get ahead in the business game, but realizes he's put a lot of money behind a bunch of amateurs who lack business sense (after all, they unironically named their company "Research in Motion" without the hindsight of what it would look abbreviated).

For this smartphone to get off the ground, Jim will have to perform a lot of smoke-and-mirrors tricks and make a lot of unkept promises--a move that has proven ill-fated for other recent dramas about tech, including The Dropout (Theranos), WeCrashed (WeWork), and Super Pumped (Uber).

Unlike those stories, BlackBerry doesn't stretch the runtime out into a sprawling, multi-episode limited series. Which is good and bad. BlackBerry seems an ideal candidate for a trendy limited series adaptation, but is wise in keeping the smartphone's rise and fall in a steadily paced two hour runtime.

The film is able to capture the big moments of its early stages, its cultural surge, and its--well, without spoiling anything, you can pretty much guess how this all ends (hint: what phone is currently in your possession, hmm?).

The bad news is, unlike those limited series, the film doesn't really seem to present any high dramatic stakes. There is no nail-biting cliffhanger or intensely-paced direction to keep us guessing at every turn. I guess that's sort of the catch with these "based on true events" tales--we KNOW how it's going to end, but the fun is watching how it gets there.

There is no original music score of pulsating strings or allusive piano keys, only needle drops of relevant pop songs to pad along any montage of Balsillie's aggressive business tactics (including forcing his sales team to dress up like Wall Street douchebags and parade around swanky restaurants and country clubs with their BlackBerrys in order to grab the elite's attention).

The performances are left to carry this story to its doom, with lukewarm results. Baruchel has always been a solid team player in comedic supporting roles in Tropic Thunder and This is the End, but doesn't quite land in this dramatic turn. His unfortunate silver-haired wigs do most of the acting, changing from a schlubby combover to a slick-backed Gordon Gekko coiffure without much of a reason.

And his knee-jerk turn from slump-shouldered doormat into a tailor-suited businessman seems undeveloped--perhaps that was the point? His character tries his best to charm and seduce in the boardroom, but awkwardly comes up short. He is NOT that kind of guy--he's a man of integrity, not of shock and awe.

On the other end of the spectrum, Howerton's Jim Balsillie seems the perfect role for an actor who has made a career out of playing an overly confident--albeit incredibly insecure--hot-headed sociopath on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Howerton knows how to seeth rage under the surface, and despite an obvious bald-cap, is capable of blowing his top whenever the odds are stacked against him. When his character screams "I'm from Waterloo--WHERE THE VAMPIRES HANG OUT!" at a business meeting, you can see a flicker of Dennis Reynolds bubbling out of his performance.

What BlackBerry does get right is the growing omnipresence of technology's power over human behavior. "Men will no longer commute...they will communicate," is enthusiastically uttered to chilling effect before the opening credits even begin to roll. In Balsillie's initial pitch of the BlackBerry, he mentions how the invention will turn "togetherness" into "self-reliance." And just look how far we've come with that attitude!

I never owned a BlackBerry and I couldn't tell you if any of my friends owned one either. Yet for one brief moment in time, this mobile device took the world by storm. BlackBerry wants to remind us that this was the phone that people had BEFORE they bought an iPhone, and it does a good, but not perfect job in doing so. Just make sure your iPhone is on silent when you see this film!

BlackBerry arrives in Canadian theaters May 12th, with a US release TBD.

The 2023 Chicago Critics Film Festival screens from May 5th to May 11th at the Music Box Theatre