BlackBerry (film)
BlackBerry is a 2023 Canadian biographical comedy-drama film directed by Matt Johnson from a script by Johnson and producer Matthew Miller. It was loosely adapted from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry. The film is a fictional account of creation of the BlackBerry line of mobile phone by co-founders Douglas Fregin and Mike Lazaridis, and investor Jim Balsillie. Lazaridis is portrayed by Jay Baruchel, and Balsillie is portrayed by Glenn Howerton. It also stars Johnson, Rich Sommer, Michael Ironside, Martin Donovan, Michelle Giroux, SungWon Cho, Saul Rubinek, and Cary Elwes in supporting roles.

BlackBerry premiered in competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on February 17, 2023. The film was released in Canada and the United States on May 12, 2023.

Plot
In Waterloo, 1996, Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Mike Lazaridis and his best friend and co-founder Douglas Fregin prepare to pitch their "PocketLink" cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie. Lazaridis is bothered by the buzzing of Balsillie's China-manufactured intercom and fixes it before he arrives. Their pitch is unsuccessful, but after Balsillie is fired from his job, he agrees to work with them if he is made CEO of RIM and given half of the company. They hesitate, but after discovering that their deal with USRobotics was a malicious attempt to bankrupt them, they bring Balsillie in as co-CEO and give him a third of RIM.

Balsillie arranges a pitch for the PocketLink with Bell Atlantic and forces Fregin and Lazaridis to build a crude prototype overnight, which he and Lazaridis take to New York. Lazaridis forgets the prototype in their taxi, leaving Balsillie to attempt the pitch alone. Lazaridis recovers the prototype at the last second and finishes the pitch, and they rebrand the PocketLink as the "BlackBerry".

In 2003, Palm CEO Carl Yankowski plans a hostile takeover of the immensely successful RIM, forcing Balsillie to sell an amount of phones that exceed Bell Atlantic's (now Verizon Communications) network limit behind Lazaridis's back. This crashes the network, so Balsillie poaches engineers from around the world to fix the problem, as well as hiring a man named Charles Purdy as RIM's COO to keep the engineers in line, though this upsets Fregin, who values the casual and fun work environment he and Lazaridis created. The new engineers fix the network issue under Purdy's strict management, and RIM avoids Yankowski's buyout.

In 2007, RIM's upcoming pitch of the BlackBerry Bold to Verizon is thrown into chaos when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone. Balsillie, a lifelong hockey fan, is occupied with trying to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins, forcing Lazaridis to pitch the Bold with Fregin instead. When it goes poorly, he panics and impulsively promises them the "Storm", a BlackBerry with a touchscreen. As he finally agrees with Purdy's suggestion to outsource the labor of the Storm to China, he insults Fregin during an argument, who quits.

Balsillie becomes nervous when he sees the iPhone's projected sales and tries to arrange a meeting with AT&T's CEO, only to learn that the Penguins sale is being finalized that day. He chooses the Penguins, but they reject his offer after revealing they know of his plan to move the Penguins to Hamilton, which they learned of when Balsillie mockingly invited Yankowski to a Hamilton game and he informed the NHL. The SEC raids RIM after learning that Balsillie hired the engineers in 2003 with illegally backdated stock options, threatening Lazaridis with legal action. Balsillie arrives too late to meet with the CEO, who snubs Balsillie by hinting that AT&T's partnership with Apple effectively admits that data usage has superseded phone minutes as a priority. Balsillie returns to RIM to find that Lazaridis sold him out to the SEC, leaving Lazaridis as the sole CEO of RIM.

One year later, the Storms arrive from China, but Lazaridis finds them to be laden with bugs and can hear buzzing when he holds one to his ear. As he begins manually fixing the buzzing phones one by one, the closing titles reveal that the Storms were almost universally inoperable and Verizon sued RIM to cover the financial loss, Lazaridis resigned as CEO in 2012, Balsillie avoided jail, Fregin sold his stock in 2007, making him one of the richest men in the world, and at the height of its success, the BlackBerry phone made up 45% of the cell phone market and is now 0% in the present day, with BlackBerry phones no longer being produced.

Cast 
 Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis
 Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie
 Matt Johnson as Doug Fregin
 Rich Sommer as Paul Stannos
 Michael Ironside as Charles Purdy
 Martin Donovan as Rick Brock
 Michelle Giroux as Dara Frankel
 SungWon Cho as Ritchie Cheung
 Mark Critch as Gary Bettman
 Saul Rubinek as John Woodman
 Cary Elwes as Carl Yankowski
 Ben Petrie as Allan

Production 

In August 2022, the film was announced after it had wrapped production. In June 2022, the London International Airport was used to film multiple airport scenes for the movie, employing local residents as background actors.

Release 
BlackBerry premiered in competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on February 17, 2023. IFC Films acquired the rights to distribute the film in the United States, with Paramount Global Content Distribution acquiring multiple international territories for distribution. The film was released in Canada on May 12, 2023, by Elevation Pictures.

An extended, serialized version of the film will air as a three-part miniseries on CBC Television in fall 2023, including additional footage that was not part of the theatrical release. The television version is slated to premiere on November 9, 2023.

Reception 
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 98% based on 171 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The critical consensus read: "With intelligence as sharp as its humor, BlackBerry takes a terrifically entertaining look at the rise and fall of a generation-defining gadget." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". 

In June 2023, just a few months after its release, Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail named the film as the third best of the 23 best Canadian comedy films ever made.

Former company executives have taken issues and raised concerns at the magnitude of fiction presented in the movie, with some considering it to be offensive to RIM's legacy.

References

External links 
 
 

2023 films
2023 comedy-drama films
2020s Canadian films
2020s English-language films
BlackBerry
Canadian comedy-drama films
English-language Canadian films
Films about mobile phones
Films based on non-fiction books
Films set in the 1990s
Films set in the 2000s
Canadian historical films
2020s business films
Canadian films based on actual events