Stream It Or Skip It: ‘BlackBerry’ On AMC, A Comedic Look At The Rise And Fall Of The Smartphone Pioneer

The feature film BlackBerry came out earlier this year to a lot of good reviews; in an unusual move, it comes to linear and streaming TV not as a movie, but as a 3-part limited series, with about 15 minutes of additional footage.

BLACKBERRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A sign for a company named Sutherland-Schultz. Then an old Honda speeds into the parking lot, the punk music playing so loudly it can be heard outside the car.

The Gist: The year is 1996. Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson), co-founders of the Canadian company Research In Motion, are at Sutherland-Schultz to pitch their new product, which they call Pocket Link. The idea is that is uses open frequencies to transmit its data, and that the unit will be able to send and receive email as well as browse the web. As they wait in an office, an intercom’s white noise bugs Mike so much that he opens it up and uses a paperclip to fix it.

The man they’re pitching to, Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), is preoccupied by a massive merger that is close to being completed; if it goes through, he gets to lead the new addition. So as he curses his way to his office, he concerns himself with a tax provision that he wants to present himself, not the “goof” from accounting that his boss wants to present it.

Mike and Doug make their clumsy pitch, and Balsillie nixes it immediately, telling them they need to present it to a venture capitalist. Balsillie then proceeds to bigfoot the accountant in the merger meeting, triggering his dismissal.

As Mike and Doug go back to RIM’s offices, situated over a drug store and populated with game-and-movie-loving coders like them, Balsillie gets back in touch. He visits the shaggy offices and fibs about his job; he says he’ll quit and come to run the company for $20,000 and a 50% share. Despite the fact that Balsillie tells them that they’re getting screwed on their deal to make modems for US Robotics, Doug tells Mike that Balsillie is a shark that shouldn’t be trusted.

After USR tells Mike that the modems they got are defective and their backing out of the deal, Mike reconsiders Balsillie’s offer. He counters with 33% of the company and the co-CEO slot for $125,000, which Balsillie takes immediately.

The next day, Balsillie barrels in, barking orders. He tries to straighten out things with USR, and then finds out that RIM has sunk $1.6 million into the project; he goes to the bank to mortgage his house to meet payroll. He wants to start meeting with cell phone carriers to sell them the concept of the Pocket Link, a name he hates.

He wants Mike to build a “bullshit” prototype, but Mike thinks he needs a year to make one that actually works, and he insists on it. Then Balsillie goes over his head to set up a meeting with Bell Atlantic in New York the next day. Mike has to make that “bullshit” prototype in 8 hours, or else.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you took the comedic concept of Silicon Valley and married it to one of the recent tech rags-to-riches-to-rags series like WeCrashed or SuperPumped: The Battle For Uber, you get BlackBerry.

Our Take: BlackBerry was directed by Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Matthew Miller based on the book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff; the tone of the film-turned-miniseries is purposefully comedic, almost to a fault. It sets up the story of RIM and BlackBerry as a struggle between the awkward nerds vs. the intense business douche for control of the company, when the likely real story of how RIM and its signature device rose and fell is a whole lot more complicated than that.

That being said, the performances of Baruchel and Howerton are fun to watch. Howerton isn’t exactly playing against type as Balsillie, who looks and acts like a balled fist and spews common hard-ass business axioms like they’re from his own particular brand of genius. Besides the bald cap that mimics Balsillie’s real-life look, we’ve seen him play this kind of role before. Still, it’s always fun to see him erupt and drop f-bombs.

Baruchel’s performance as Mike Lazaridis is actually more compelling. Yes, in a lot of ways, he’s a typical beta-male nerd, unable to be assertive in a way that would make him at all an effective businessperson. But he also has pride in his work, and wants his signature product to be as good as it can be: “‘Good enough’ is the enemy of humanity” he tells Balsillie in response to a request for a quick prototype. So, despite his lack of assertiveness, he’s willing to stand up for himself where he thinks it counts.

What we hope is that that surprising inner strength carries through the rest of the story, as the BlackBerry becomes a dominant mobile device in the business space, faces intellectual property challenges, and ultimately crashes and burns after the iPhone is introduced in 2007.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After the pitch with Bell Atlantic almost fails, Mike saves it by telling them the tech that will make it work. Bell Atlantic’s John Woodman (Saul Rubinek) asks Mike what the device is called. Keep in mind that Mike has a blackberry stain on his shirty.

Sleeper Star: Johnson plays Doug Fregin, the more aggressive and doubtful partner, who thinks that RIM is just fine without the likes of Balsillie. We wonder at what point he’s going to be pushed out of the company.

Most Pilot-y Line: “If you want to be great, you learn to sacrifice. And the greater the sacrifice, the greater you’ll be,” says Balsillie to Mike when Mike wonders why Doug isn’t coming to New York. Sounds like terrible advice.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite playing the story for more laughs than are probably necessary, the lead performances of BlackBerry are very watchable, and the story of the brand’s rise and demise is certainly one worth watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.