This rise and fall story a couple of tech firm may have simply simply been one other “Social Community” knock-off, or an try at doing one more “Steve Jobs”-like exploration of the geniuses behind a giant tech breakout. Fortunately, Matt Johnson is aware of higher. “BlackBerry” has extra in widespread with the works of Judd Apatow or Mike Choose than David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin. The characters are all doofuses, their enterprise supervisor and co-CEO is a sociopathic shark and like a personality straight out of “It is At all times Sunny in Philadelphia.”

Johnson additionally leans exhausting into the comedy via visuals, using an analogous aesthetic to his 2013 movie “The Dirties” and using a mockumentary fashion to deliver out the comedy in a broad, nearly DIY means. Dramatic handheld zooms and really shaky digicam assist place us on the heart of the motion, and in addition name consideration to the absurdity of the characters and their actions.

Making the most of the BlackBerry founders not being as recognizable or stuffed with controversy as Zuckerberg or Jobs, Johnson permits his actors to play with the broad archetypes of the characters and actually make them their very own.

Baruchel is incredible as a pseudo-Richard Hendricks from “Silicon Valley,” a dorky doofus with a genius concept however zero sense of how enterprise works, and somebody who hears the worst deal in historical past and simply jumps straight at it. Higher but, Baruchel manages to nail Lazaridis’ flip from harmless programmer to tech mogul with out making him simply one other evil tech bro.

Howerton, nevertheless, simply steals the entire present, with a deranged, offended, and really loud efficiency because the dissatisfied and ruthless shark that did legitimately assist promote the BlackBerry and switch it right into a juggernaut.