Film & Television

John Maguire on film: Hilarious, touching and scarcely credible story of BlackBerry’s boom and bust

BlackBerry, the story of the device that reigned before the iPhone, is very funny while being a sobering cautionary tale

The cast of BlackBerry: this frequently hilarious and unexpectedly touching film traces a scarcely credible story of boom and bust with a grainy, gritty realism

BlackBerry, directed by Matt Johnson; nationwide, 15A; rating: ****

There's an early moment in Matt Johnson’s fascinating brand-opic BlackBerry where a room full of sweating computer engineers, having collectively made a technical breakthrough in their attempts to develop a phone that can receive emails, dance around to Mark Morrison's swaggering club hit Return of the Mack. The sight of these awkward and unkempt keyboard jockeys aping the suave aesthetic of mid-1990s R&B brought a roar ...