Film / BlackBerry

Mike Lazaridis: I will build a prototype, but I'll do it perfectly or I don't do it.
Jim Balsillie: Mike, are you familiar with the saying "Perfect is the enemy of good"?
Mike Lazaridis: Well, "good enough" is the enemy of humanity.

Blackberry is a 2023 film about the rise and fall of the BlackBerry, the mobile device that changed telecommunications, directed by Matt Johnson. It stars Jay Baruchel as Mike Lazaridis, Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie, Matt Johnson as Doug Fregin and Michael Ironside as Charles Purdy.

The film follows BlackBerry's rise in the mid-'90s to its collapse in the late '00s as it becomes embroiled in legal problems and heightened competition.

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Blackberry contains examples of the following:

• Artistic License – History: Ooh boy, where to begin:
  • The main trio were noted to have almost nothing in common with their real-life counterparts.
    • Mike Lazaridis is portrayed as a deeply socially awkward nerd who needs Doug and Jim to constantly coach him on how to do the most basic of business interactions. In real life, Lazardis has been a described as a fairly savvy and astute businessman, in addition to his skills as an engineer, who could run the company fine without either's help. As the years go by however, he does finally lose the socially awkwardness and is portrayed as more ruthless businessman.
    • Doug Fregin is shown as an obnoxious headband-wearing dork who constantly disrupts company activities, wears geeky t-shirts 24/7 and is openly accused of "doing nothing" by Lazardis. In real life Fregin is an extremely private person, so little is known about him, but those who've talked about him describe him as a serious, no-nonsense engineer who would be appalled by his fictional counterpart's behavior.
    • In the movie, Jim is a bully who constantly yells at his employees and his competitors and cares about little other than his self-advancement. The real Balsillie (the only member of the main trio who actually commented on the film) was noted to be a strict but still agreeable business partner who respected his peers.
  • At the beginning of the film, Research in Motion (the company's original name) is a barely-functional strip mall startup with a nonexistent work ethic that gets scammed out of its first deal. When Balsillie actually met Lazaridis and Fregin, the company had several years of experience working for major companies with little issue. Lazaridis had even won a technical Academy Award for his contributions to film editing.
  • The first BlackBerry prototype looked much like the eventual finished product, rather than the Frankenstein–Game Boy contraption shown in the movie.
  • The movie makes it seem like the BlackBerry name came from a stain on Mike's shirt, when in fact, it was conceived by an advertising agency. In fact, the idea of the name supposedly came from how the QWERTY keyboard buttons looked like a the bumpy appearance of a blackberry fruit.
  • Fregin's departure from BlackBerry is portrayed as a personal, acrimonious dispute between him and Lazarides. In reality, both Fregin and Lazarides were openly considering selling their stakes in the company by 2007 simply due to its dwindling prospects, and the two of them went into future ventures together once they had both left the company.
  • One of the ways BlackBerry goes down in the film is that Jim constantly skips work in order to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins and move them to Hamilton. While Balsillie's attempts to buy an NHL team were a fairly big news story at the time, he notes that it never was a serious venture for him, and he spent a lot more time training for triathlons than trying to get a team (though he was as big of a fan of hockey as it is portrayed in the film).
• Berserk Button: Suggesting that BlackBerry move its manufacturing to China is a major one for Mike.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mike seems like an affable introvert, but when his BlackBerry becomes a success Mike lets Purdy and Balsillie turn RIM into nightmare workplace so his BlackBerry can remain perfect.
• Book Ends: The film begins with Laziridis fiddling with a cheap piece of Chinese-made electronics, and ends with him doing the same, but this time manufactured by his own company.
• Character Development: Mike starts out as incredibly socially awkward and someone who needs to be hounded by others to get any business done. As the years pass and BlackBerry is a success, Mike becomes a lot more confident but also standoffish, and even has the grit to get Balsillie arrested alone for financial crimes while he gets of free. Though in this case Balsillie is actually the only who committed the crime, but whereas the old Mike may have been convinced to take the fall through sheer pressure, the new Mike has none of it.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Balsillie is willing to do whatever it takes to make RiM a success, including committing stock fraud in order to poach talent from bigger companies.
• Creative Sterility: Mike invents the BlackBerry, Mike can only invent the BlackBerry, all improvements to the BlackBerry are reactions to problems that arise from the development of the BlackBerry. Mike dooms his company when he alienates all of his creative friends just as the more impressive iPhone arrives and the only innovation Mike can come up with to compete is a clicky touchscreen.
• The Determinator: Balsillie powers Research in Motion to success seemingly through sheer force of will, a trait that comes back to bite him when he determinedly tries to do two improbable meetings on the same day.
• Didn't Think This Through: Invoked by an NHL board member on why the owners unanimously voted against Jim's attempt to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins.
  Gary Bettman: You know, it’s funny. It’s one thing to have a secret plan to fuck over the NHL and move a team to Canada. It’s another thing to brag to your rich friends before you actually do it.
  • A recurring theme with Jim who clearly believes he’s always smarter and more savvy than everyone else. He essentially gets a Establishing Character Moment early in the film when he directly defies his boss and tries to take credit for a coworkers hard work. It’s heavily implied he gets fired for this as a result.
• Embarrassing Last Name: Invoked twice with Jim Ballsillie:
  • First at the new RIM offices, where a whiteboard drawing of Jim with a comically oversized scrotum and the caption "Mr BALLSillie!!!" can be briefly seen.
  • Then again during the NHL meeting when Jim starts to lose it after his bid to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins is denied.
  Gary Bettman: Don, can we see that Mr Bald-Silly gets safely back to Canada?
• "Eureka!" Moment: One hitting a bit late as Jim reaches out to Stan Sigman for a deal, pointing out that the iPhone uses far more data than a Blackberry and way too many minutes. Stan turns him down, warning that "the problem with selling minutes is there's only one minute in a minute." Jim is baffled at that...and then realizes that AT&T wanted Apple to invent a data-guzzling phone as it's about data, not minutes. Too bad by the time he's relating this, he's already being kicked out of the company.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Charles Purdy may be an abusive Bad Boss, but even he looks aghast when Mike tells Fregin he's useless.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: This is Balsillie's primary characterization. He's prone to losing his temper at the slightest provocation, in stark contrast to the meek Lazaridis and affable Fregin.
• Holding the Floor: Laziridis accidentally leaves their prototype in the cab right before their pitch to Verizon, and abandons the meeting right as it's about to begin to go retrieve it. Left alone, Balsillie manages to give a presentation on his own, which doesn't impress the Verizon board without the tech specs but does stall long enough for Laziridis to return.
• Informed Attribute: Fregin states that his recreational "movie nights" and other in-office activities are the reason why the rank and file engineers are willing to work "eighty-hour work weeks." However, we only see the main characters working long hours, while the rest of the engineers do nothing but goof off at work, with one whole sequence dedicated to showing how their office looks like an arcade.
• It Will Never Catch On:
  • Jim's first pitch to Verizon gets shot down because, based on their own attempts to develop a mobile device, the Verizon board doesn't believe that their network can handle it.
  • Mike repeatedly says that the iPhone won't take off because it's too expensive and has no keyboard, although it's clear that it actually has him very worried.
• Layman's Terms: Deconstructed. Balsillie pitches the BlackBerry to Verizon in layman's terms, but because they're all engineers working on that exact situation, they think he's overly ambitious. Once Lazaridis returns and is able to give a more technical and accurate explanation of how it works (complete with an accurate guess of the problems they've face), they're impressed.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Fregin's actual job at RIM is to be Mike's personal cheerleader and emotional support so Mike can function in the business world and build the Blackberry.
• Noodle Incident: We never find out why Jim Balsillie got fired. He merely says his bosses are a bunch of idiots, though based on his actions earlier and later in the film it was probably Jim's fault.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Balsillie initially comes off as an abrasive jerk who skirts the law in the name of turning RIM into a working company. But when becomes a success Jim keeps doing shady things which causes more problems than it solves, and then it's revealed all Jim cared about was buying a hockey team the entire time.
• The Perfectionist: Laziridis often butts heads with Balsillie since he refuses to do shoddy work.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Doug explains that there's an unused Internet signal floating around everywhere, like "The Force," which prompts only blank silence from Jim. Doug asks if he's seen Star Wars and Jim says no.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Before working for RIM Jim was a middle manager who believed he was so valuable to his company that he could blatantly defy his boss’s orders and attempt to take credit for a colleague’s work….at a meeting his boss was attending. He then has the gaul to refer to his boss as being an idiot for very justifiably firing him.
  • While he does have a great deal of success with the BlackBerry he then thinks he can buy the Pittsburgh Penguins, one of the most successful and popular teams in the NHL, and then move them to small-market Hamilton without the league’s knowledge. Obviously once they find out they are not happy and the owners unanimously block the sale.
• Stealing the Credit: We first meet Balsillie as he's researching someone else's presentation so that he can present it himself and take the credit.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The general beats of the BlackBerry story are respected, but the characters and individual events are greatly exaggerated to make for a more dramatic story.

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