'BlackBerry' pockets rave reviews as tech leaders say phone story doesn't ring true

David Friend, The Canadian Press

“BlackBerry” director Matt Johnson is enjoying the controversy simmering around his latest film.

Over the past month, some of the most influential people in Canada’s technology and business circles settled into sneak preview screenings of his darkly comedic spin on the rise and fall of the beloved Waterloo, Ont.-created smartphone.

And many emerged deeply confounded by what they saw.

After one Toronto viewing a week ago, a group of former employees at BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion gathered over drinks to discuss a mixture of Canadian pride and confusion they were feeling about the film's revisionist history of the company. 

As "BlackBerry" heads to theatres nationwide this weekend, amid heaps of buzz and critical raves, the film faces its share of sour notes from those unhappy with how freely — some say even carelessly — it plays with the truth.

Earlier this week, RIM’s former chief financial officer Dennis Kavelman published an opinion piece in the National Post calling the film an “obvious, lazy portrayal of tech bro culture” that “seems to go out of its way to diminish and tarnish the legacy of the founders and employees of one of Canada’s great technology stories.”

And a recent 18-minute YouTube video by former RIM employee Matthias Wandel – who also served as one of the production's consultants – ripped apart the accuracy of the movie trailer without having seen the film itself.

“Look, the fact that a Canadian movie is even getting this kind of attention is a miracle,” the director said last month during a run of press interviews.

“(That) there would be some comment on accuracy in portrayal or whatever, to me, is a compliment.”

Understanding Johnson's "BlackBerry" requires knowing a bit about his work with co-writer Matt Miller. Together, they're a pair of cinematic pranksters who crashed NASA disguised as a documentary crew for their 2016 film "Operation Avalanche" and blended fictional characters with real scenarios in their TV comedy "Nirvanna the Band the Show."

"BlackBerry" is very loosely based on “Losing the Signal,” a 2015 book by reporters Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff. The film effectively takes their facts and feeds them through a paper shredder before reassembling the jagged remnants of familiarity.

Johnson's movie is less interested in the finer details of a Canadian business story than he is in following a group of underdogs whose great idea changed the world and then vanished almost as quickly as they were blinded by success.

Former co-CEO Jim Balsillie is played by "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" actor Glenn Howerton as a nefarious troublemaker. His business partner Mike Lazaridis is portrayed by Ottawa-born Jay Baruchel as a socially inept visionary.

Johnson rounds out the trio of leads as RIM co-founder Doug Fregin, a composite of various RIM employees and elements of fiction.

The actors had not met Balsillie and Lazaridis before or during the film's production.

Both Howerton and Baruchel are receiving praise from audiences and befuddlement from those who knew the real co-CEOs and say they missed the mark by a mile.

Johnson sums up the negative feedback from former RIM staff as what you might hear from people with an idealized sense of self, unwilling to see their actions as the rest of the world does.

“Everybody’s John Wick in their head,” added a mildly agitated Baruchel, tipping to the invincible action hero.

Some of the film's pre-release attention surrounded Howerton's portrayal of Balsillie as a firebrand leader with equally ambitious and volatile tendencies. He took the role with the mindset of playing “a man who always thought he was the smartest guy in every room.”

“In order to be someone like Jim, with the amount of drive that he has, you have to be trying to fill some sort of a hole of neglect,” Howerton said.

“I don’t know if that actually exists for Jim," he added.

Even though he is the target of the film's greatest misinformation — at one point directly suggesting he's a criminal — the real-life Balsillie has been surprisingly eager to play along.

He called Howerton's portrayal a "roast" in a recent interview with The Canadian Press, a sentiment he's echoed at select appearances tied to the film's release. But he's also pointed to finer details he wished the filmmakers got right, including the design of his office.

Johnson, who candidly acknowledges the film would've probably benefited more from an agitated Balsillie in the press, takes the businessman's diplomatic stance as a sign he's secretly stung over how he appears in the movie.

“Jim, we really got you, my friend — I know it hurts, but that’s you," he said, addressing an absent Balsillie.

"It may not be the you that you lived day-to-day but it is the character of you sucked from history and put in a painting."

More surprises could be in store with the BlackBerry story following the theatrical release. An extended three-part episodic version of the film will air on CBC later this year.

In the meantime, Johnson is looking at various markers to determine whether "BlackBerry" is a success. One of them he might not even hear about.

"It’ll be if the next time Jim sees somebody in the street for real," he said.

"(And they say,) 'Hey, Jim Balsillie, I saw a movie about you.'"

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2023.

'BlackBerry' film hails the must-have gadget that the iPhone turned into a forgotten relic

Michael Liedtke, The Associated Press

Almost everyone knows Steve Jobs' uncanny vision, relentless drive and technological wizardry hatched the iPhone, a breakthrough that continues to reshape culture 16 years after the late Apple co-founder introduced the device to the world.

But when Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, another smartphone was the must-have gadget. It was the BlackBerry, a device so addictive that it became known as the “CrackBerry” among tech nerds and power brokers hunched over a tiny keyboard that was best operated with both thumbs clickety-clacking.

Now the BlackBerry is “that phone people had before they bought an iPhone," a relic so irrelevant that the Canadian company that made it is now valued at $3 billion — down from $85 billion at its 2008 peak when it still controlled nearly half of the smartphone market.

But its legacy is worth remembering — and audiences will get a chance to learn more about its origins in the new film, “BlackBerry." The film out Friday in theaters is the latest movie or TV series to delve into technology's penchant for groundbreaking innovation, blind ambition, ego clashes and power struggles that turn into morality tales.

That formula has already spawned two Academy Award-nominated movies written by Aaron Sorkin, 2010's “The Social Network” delving into Facebook's founding and 2015's “Steve Jobs,” dissecting the Silicon Valley icon. Then came last year's flurry of TV series examining the scandals enveloping WeWork ("WeCrashed"), Uber ("Super Pumped") and disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes ("The Dropout"), which won Amanda Seyfried an Emmy for her turn in the starring role.

Unlike any of those biopics, “BlackBerry” is told as a dark comedy revolving around two amiable but bumbling nerds, Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin, who can't seem to execute their plan to create a “computer in a phone” until they bring in a hard-nosed, foul-mouthed businessman, Jim Balsillie.

Although “BlackBerry" is based on a meticulously researched book called “The Lost Signal,” director and co-star Matt Johnson acknowledged taking more liberties in the movie during an interview with The Associated Press. Among other changes, Johnson cited shifting some timelines, shaping the company culture through his view of the 1990s and infusing the key characters with "our own personalities and our own ideas.

“But our lawyers wouldn’t let us put anything in the film that was an outright fabrication,” Johnson stressed.

Johnson had to do a lot of guesswork in his role as the enigmatic Fregin, who sold all his stock in BlackBerry's holding company — then known as Research In Motion, RIM — around the same time Apple released the first iPhone and has kept a low profile ever since.

“Doug is true cipher, he has never done a taped interview," said Johnson, which led him to portray Fregin as a “kind of mascot figure who is tying the culture of the office together.”

Ironically, Johnson got a lot of his idea on how to depict Fregin from one of RIM's early employees, Matthias Wandel, who posted a YouTube video critiquing inaccuracies that he saw in the “BlackBerry” trailer. Before that, Wandel talked extensively to Johnson about RIM's history and even provided diaries that he kept while during the BlackBerry's development.

“I think when he sees the film he is going to be quite charmed by how much of his original notes are in the film,” Johnson said of Wandel. “It’s so funny that he has released that video (because) so much of my character is based on him. I stole everything from that dude. I owe him huge.”

Balsillie, RIM's co-CEO with Lazaridis, emerges as the film's most intriguing character. Actor Glenn Howerton (best known for his role in the TV series, “It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia”) portrays Balsillie in a way that casts him as both the story's chief antagonist and protagonist dropping f-bombs in tyrannical temper tantrums at the same time he is making savvy moves that turned the BlackBerry into a cultural sensation.

“It always felt like this was a guy who weirdly felt a little outside of sort of what people would consider to be sort of a titan of technology or business,” Howerton said of Basillie during an AP interview. “I played him as someone who had something to prove at almost all times, that he could play with the big boys.”

Balsillie eventually became entangled in legal problems tied to improper changes to the pricing of stock options — a tactic known as “backdating” that also ensnared Apple's former general counsel and former chief financial officer in 2007 for their handling of compensation packages awarded Jobs. Both Balsillie and Lazaridis left RIM in 2012.

Now that BlackBerry has faded from the public consciousness, Balsillie seems to be welcoming the renewed attention from the new film even though he quibbled with some aspects of his character during a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

Unlike Lazaridis and Fregin, Balsillie attended a recent showing of the film in Toronto and even walked the red carpet with Johnson and Howerton.

“In many ways, (Jim) was the hero, he was the character who changed for the better (in the film),” Johnson said. “The audience was just with him. It was almost a psychedelic experience to be in theater watching the movie with Jim, with Jim being the person who was laughing the loudest.”

Balsillie, who is mocked in one of the film's scenes for having never seen “Star Wars,” confided to Howerton that he enjoyed watching “BlackBerry” so much that it was the first movie he had ever seen twice in his life.

Cast of 'BlackBerry' film discuss the company's rise and fall

Daniel Johnson , BNN Bloomberg

BlackBerry’s rise to prominence has had lasting impacts on today’s technology industry, and the company’s ultimate downfall tells a compelling story, according to cast members of the upcoming “BlackBerry” film.  

In an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Friday, Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton spoke about their respective roles in the film that chronicles the history of the Waterloo-based technology company. 

“The world that we live in today rests in large part on the shoulders of what these nerds did in Kitchener at the end of the 90s,” Baruchel said. 

In the film, Baruchel portrays Research In Motion Inc. (RIM) co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, and Howerton plays the role of Jim Balsillie, the other RIM co-CEO.  

“Their (BlackBerry’s) end is somewhat tragic, at least narratively, because they went from almost half the market share to zero after the advent of the iPhone,” Baruchel said. 

Baruchel said the story of the rise and fall of the Canadian technology company has all the elements of a good story, as well as “utter anonymity,” which he said is a “chronically Canadian thing.” 

“They're not household names, I think there's often a cult of personality around tech titans and innovators. For the most part, these guys are still under the radar,” he said. 

Howerton said key aspects of the film deal with the process of getting the BlackBerry smartphone to market.

“These guys were in a race the entire time to beat other people who are trying to do the exact same thing,” Howerton said. 

“I think that's part of the thriller aspect of the film, is watching, ‘How do we get this thing to market before somebody beats us?’” 

NOSTALGIA 

BlackBerry devices surged in popularity following the release of its first smartphone in 2002, but some now see the device as nostalgic. 

“It’s one of these products that seems to still occupy quite a sentimental and nostalgic bit of real estate in a lot of people's minds and certainly the people that used them,” Baruchel said. 

The device had a culture of its own, according to Baruchel.

DRAMA NOT DOCUMENTARY 

Howerton said he was set to meet Balsillie for the first time Friday night ahead of the film’s scheduled release on May 12.

Baruchel said that Balsillie appears to understand the movie is “not a documentary,” but rather a drama. 

“I believe certainly artistically, that there's a distinction between accuracy and truth. The larger sort of philosophical truth and the emotional truth of the story trumps absolutely everything,” Baruchel said.