Cast your mind back to mid 2008: rhinestones are everywhere, Britney is making an epic comeback and Barack Obama is gearing up to seize the reins. A recession is looming and Twilight has caused a global tween swoon, while Kim Kardashian’s collaboration with Lipsy for Next isn’t even a twinkle in a marketing director’s eye. And yet, despite the fact that Steve Jobs launched the Apple smartphone a whole year earlier, BlackBerry’s stock is at its peak. A few years later, in 2010, when peplum was a thing and Will and Kate announced their plan to get hitched, it still held a huge 43 per cent market share. Why? Because although Jobs’s invention was the most exciting technology around, back then BlackBerry was more than a device. It was a way of life.
This week, as our smartphones ping with reviews of the new iPhone 15, a film is hitting cinema screens to remind us of just that. Tracking the rise and fall of the Canadian brand and its founders with an air of The Thick of It, The Social Network and The Big Short, BlackBerry details how a bunch of Star Wars obsessed nerds led by Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin revolutionised the mobile phone with the help of a cutting, unemployed businessman named Jim Balsillie. Fizzing with wit and drama, it has become one of the ES Magazine team’s favourite films of the year. What it doesn’t do, however, is show exactly how the BlackBerry captured so many of our hearts.
