‘iSteve’ — Funny Or Die’s Epic Steve Jobs Biopic — Is Here

When I first heard that Funny or Die was making a feature-length mockumentary/biopic on Steve Jobs starring Justin Long called iSteve, I didn’t believe it. I thought it was a joke. But it’s not, and it’s here.

The full 79-minute feature — Funny or Die’s first full-length movie — went online early this morning. It was written by Funny or Die staffer Ryan Perez using Steve Jobs’s Wikipedia page as his main reference source. According to Splitsider, iSteve was written and shot in ten days total.

The early reviews via Twitter from people who had an hour and a half free this morning to watch it are overwhelmingly positive…

Naturally, some overly-sensitive tech geeks are offended by it — HOW DARE THEY LAMPOON STEVE JOBS! — like this guy writing for Fortune, an utterly humorless f*ck who seems completely oblivious to the fact that this is not a movie to be taken seriously…

It’s hard to say exactly when the feature film called iSteve — released Tuesday on Funny or Die’s website — jumps the shark.

It could be the very first scene, when a balding and bearded Steve Jobs (played by Justin Long of the Get a Mac commercials) breaks the third wall of theater and says to the audience: “What’s that? You want to hear my story?”

Or when Jobs returns from an acid trip with the specs of the original Apple computer so fully formed in his mind he only has to dictate them to a rapidly scribbling Steve Wozniak (Jorge Garcia of Lost).

Or when Jobs and Bill Gates (James Urbaniak) become unlikely gigabuddies and spend an afternoon in the Jobs’ garage “programming” by attacking old circuit boards with a saw, stapler and hammer.

But for me the low point of this low-budget biopic was when Jobs and Melinda French Gates (Michaela Watkins) don headgear, strip to their green metallic skins and have virtual sex in a computer-generated landscape.

But what can you expect from a movie produced in 80 days from a script that screenwriter Ryan Perez claims he wrote in less than a week using only Jobs’ Wikipedia page as source material?

The world is full of ridiculous people.

Meanwhile, I’ve watched the first 15 minutes of iSteve and am loving it so far, so there’s that. Go watch it yourself when you have 79 minutes to spare.

×