I attended a matinee of Blackberry at the Galaxy. At first the reviews were mixed but following its release the Rotten Tomatoes site listed 98% approval and I was pleasantly surprised at the filmmakers’ success in telling a Canadian high-tech story in such a comedic and engaging way.
Everyone remembers the unlikely Waterloo based Research in Motion (RIM) company which had a Cinderella element to the story right from the beginning. It opens with a group of University of Waterloo electrical engineering students who loved hanging out, playing video games, and watching movies together in the same office space. They managed to pioneer the first cell phone which could receive and send e-mail, and the Blackberry device had a superior encryption key which made communications unhackable. Business customers flocked to the Blackberry and President Obama would not relinquish his while in office. The phone had the nickname “Crackberry” for the addictive nature of the device.
In a David and Goliath tale, RIM went head-to-head with Apple Corporation when the iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs at Macworld 2007. At its peak in 2010 Blackberry had almost 40% of the US cell phone market or 60M Americans. In addition to Apple’s competitive iPhone, the introduction of the open-source Android operating system allowed Sony, Motorola, Samsung, and LG to take their bite out of the cell phone market.
By January 2012 the company co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis & Jim Balsillie (of Peterborough) resigned. Eventually new venture capitalists revamped the company and concentrated on software only, while developing future applications in AI and self-driving cars. The manufacturing component ceased to exist.
In the film Mike and Jim, as portrayed by Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton come across as larger than life exaggerations of the real-life subjects. Matt Johnson is a young (37) filmmaker and actor who directed the film. I would recommend seeing this film as a positive step for the up and down Canadian film industry; something akin to the Canadian high-tech industry itself.
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