Ashton Kutcher Takes Shot At Wozniak Right Before ‘Jobs’ Film Release

Image via Jobs The Film/YouTube screenshot

The Jobs film starring Ashton Kutcher as the late Steve Jobs hits theaters today, and the buzz is everywhere.

It isn’t news that Kutcher received some early negative reviews regarding his performance or the film’s ability to accurately portray Job’s life. Now that the film has been released, the general consensus pretty much remains the same. Although Kutcher admitted that playing the role of Jobs “terrified” him, and that he’d rather the role be played by an admirer than an actor, whether or not he effectively translated his passion into the role is up for debate.

As of now, the film has a 27% rating over a spread of 66 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Chicago Tribune, while acknowledging the uncanny resemblance between Kutcher and Jobs, dismissed the deliverance entirely, calling it a “bland performance” and hoping that it’s “the lamer of the two biopics.”

The Washington Times expressed similar sentimets: “At best, ‘Jobs’ is a tasteful TV movie of the week, bland but competent, inoffensive but inherently forgettable. At worst, it’s a superficial, lackluster gloss on a man whose life deserves far better treatment, and far more scrutiny.”

Not everyone continues to kick the film while it’s down.

I saw an advanced screening of the movie and it’s clear that Kutcher did his homework. He nails Jobs’ peculiar mannerisms perfectly. Stern, too, put in his research. He interviewed the young men who worked with Jobs in the early ‘garage days’ of Apple,” wrote Forbes.

But there seems to be as much entertainment on-screen as off-screen. Wozniak blasted the film on “Good Morning America” earlier this year after seeing some early footage.

He said, “As far as the personalities that were in that scene, this was just ridiculous. Steve Jobs as some sort of overseeing…‘I’m the father of society’…No, he didn’t act like that at all. The portrayal in the clip was a little absurd… I never wore a tie or looked like a professional. I think [Steve Jobs] would have been a little offended and embarrassed by it just like myself… I think he would say that was, you know, a little bit too phony.”

Kutcher returned the shot at Steve Wozniak during an interview with AP in lieu of Wozniak’s criticisms, saying, “Woz is being paid by another company to support their Steve Jobs film. It’s personal for him, but it’s also business. We have to keep that in mind. He was also extremely unavailable to us when producing this film. He’s a brilliant man and I respect his work, but he wasn’t available to us as a resource, so his account isn’t going to be our account because we don’t know exactly what it was. We did the best job we could. Nobody really knows what happened in the rooms.”

Watch the Jobs movie trailer below: