BlackBerry (2023) review

Engineering wizard Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), who runs a small-time electronics company called Research In Motion with his pal Douglas Fregin (Johnson), partners with businessman James Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) to develop a device they call the BlackBerry that doubles as a phone and computer ... and then have to worry about a potential corporate takeover by Carl Yankowski (Cary Elwes), the CEO of competitor Palm, Inc., and face competition from some guy named Steve out of Cupertino.  I suppose the "target audience" for this type of biopic (not to mention Tetris, which also came out this year) are tech-savvy types who enjoy watching fellow engineers and programmers work tirelessly on a new product ... it's the "Tech Nerd-as-Hero" model, and those not in the clique (or mildly curious) might find little interest in the subject.  The style mimics shows like The Office with hand-held cameras and frequent zoom-ins, except it lacks the light touch - unlike Adam McKay's The Big Short, it doesn't have a snarky sense of humor to keep it snappy (Howerton does add a bit of fire, but that's pretty much it).  For the record, I never had one, but I knew someone who owned a 'CrackBerry' (around 2004 or so) and he couldn't drive two blocks without checking it ... so they must have done something right.