‘BlackBerry’ a love letter to Canada and the ’90s, says star Jay Baruchel | 24CA News
Moviegoers searching for a wholesome dose of comedy, chaos and Canadiana received’t should look a lot additional than BlackBerry, a hilarious new film that tells the story of how Waterloo’s personal Research in Motion took over the cellphone market and simply as swiftly crashed and burned.
From begin to end, BlackBerry takes you on a chaotic experience that can make you doubt the competence of tech bros and enterprise capitalists alike, who’re commonly trusted with tens of millions of {dollars} and stewarding the know-how that runs the world.
But irrespective of how cobbled collectively the unique BlackBerry was, this film will nonetheless make you marvel on the sheer will of the Canadians that innovated and marketed their method to the highest, and created the smartphone business as we all know it in the present day. It’s a surprisingly entertaining story that can make you chortle greater than you had been anticipating.
Jay Baruchel performs BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis as a quiet tech visionary that’s all hunched shoulders and anxious perfectionism. Alongside his goofy sidekick co-founder Doug Fregin, performed by the movie’s director Matt Johnson, the pair handle to slap collectively the primary working cellphone and e-mail machine — in between film nights and online game tournaments.
Then, Jim Balsillie, performed by Glenn Howerton of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame, steps in to whip the infantile bunch right into a multi-million greenback firm — satisfied he can yell his method to a functioning group.
Baruchel, finest recognized for his comedy, takes a brand new tack on this dramatic position, and it positively fits him. In an interview with Global News, the actor revealed that the story of BlackBerry is close to and pricey to his coronary heart as a Canadian who grew up within the Nineties.
“It’s a bit of a love letter to a time and place that we came of age,” Baruchel stated, revealing that loads of the ’90s paraphernalia that peppered the set got here from the director’s personal home.
This is Johnson’s largest movie but. As an indie director from Toronto, he informed Global News he was on a mission to get Canada extra recognition.
“For us, as kind-of patriots, we thought, ‘Oh wouldn’t it be cool to really try to plant a flag on the invention of the smartphone for this country?’” Johnson stated, “Make a film that’s broad enough and accessible enough that Americans and people around the world can see it and be like, ‘Oh wow, I can’t believe the Canadians did something.’”
Johnson added that American star Howerton didn’t know that BlackBerry was a Canadian model earlier than coming into the movie. The It’s Always Sunny actor informed Global News that Johnson made him take a “Canad proficiency test before casting him.
“Do you speak the language?” Howerton joked. “Do you know the structure of our government?” he added, as Baruchel and Johnson laughed.
The three males had been boisterous and filled with quips throughout their interview, bearing on how an expletive-fuelled Baruchel was nervous nobody would wish to watch a film set in late ’90s Waterloo, and the way Howerton had the crew of BlackBerry strolling on eggshells round him as a result of his pseudo-method-acting course of.
(You can watch the interview in full, prime.)
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‘BlackBerry’ will probably be launched in theatres throughout Canada on May 12.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
