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Blackberry — Review: One Hell of a Story
by KJ Proulx
Films about the making of a product can either be interesting or dull. In my opinion, there’s not a lot of room in between because it was either a good story or not. In the case of Blackberry, I was obviously aware of the phone but never knew the behind-the-scenes stuff. I’m also slightly biased being a Canadian, with this film taking place very close to where I’m from, so if that makes you take this review with a grain of salt, so be it. I absolutely loved it from start to finish and here’s why.
Blackberry tells the story of Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his genius mind that creates the world’s first smartphone, the Blackberry.
Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) steps in and buys his way into being the Co-CEO of the company in order to sell the phone. Balsillie is determined to shoot for the moon and nothing else, which in turn may or may not hurt the company overall. If you know the story, you know what I mean, but I won’t ruin it. My favourite thing about watching this film though was the fact that I didn’t know half of what went down in real life. This was a riveting and engaging lesson of school that I felt like a sat through.
Adapted from the novel by Matthew Miller and Matt Johnson (who also did a fantastic job directing this film), the dialogue here was stellar. I was glued to…
