Reviews Lukewarm for "Jobs"; "Duck Dynasty" Star Escorted From Hotel
TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Now it's time for the pop culture lead. Looks aren't everything. Sure Ashton Kutcher does indeed bear a passable resemblance to Steve Jobs. But beyond the beard and bad glasses, does the new biopic on the Apple founder miss the mark? Erin McPike is here with that story. Erin?</s>ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's getting some mixed reviews. And my head was actually spinning reading some of them today, because they're all over the map on what's right and what isn't. The movie takes us back to when Apple was just a concept and long before we had our very own iPods and iPhones. Critics are saying it may help you understand the history behind how you got your personal computer but it may not help you understand Steve Jobs.</s>ASHTON KUTCHER, ACTOR: The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Ashton Kutcher is a matinee idol but as he told the crowd at the Teen Choice Awards, he learned something valuable from tech superstar Steve jobs, who he plays in the new biopic.</s>KUTCHER: And you can build your own thing. You can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don't live one, build one.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Kutcher threw himself into the role of the Apple founder, even dieting on fruit only. That landed Kutcher in the hospital. (</s>BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "JOBS") KUTCHER, "STEVE JOBS": It's mine and they're taking it away from me?</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): It's not the only tough part that comes with playing a public figure, especially one who died as recently as Steve Jobs.</s>JOSHUA MICHAEL STERN, DIRECTOR, "JOBS": It's a real warts and all story. And in fact, Steve comes off pretty harsh. Very honest, sort of brutal, exacting sometimes in the way he deals with business.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Director Joshua Michael Stern wanted to focus on the early days of Apple.</s>STERN: It really started with a sort of bunch of geeky guys fiddling with computer boards and old black and white TVs. And that's what was fascinating about the whole story for me.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Jobs and his business partner, Steve Wozniak, built Apple from the garage up.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody wants to buy a computer. Nobody!</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Wozniak has called the movie inaccurate.</s>PIERS MORGAN, CNN HOST: This scene apparently has you doubting that anyone's ever going to want to buy a computer. Was that true?</s>STEVE WOZNIAK, COFOUNDER, APPLE: No. It was absolutely the opposite. It was more like myself convincing Steve Jobs that these great social revolutions were going to be made possible by this device. He didn't even suggest we start a computer company back then.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Critics say the film delivers a sanitized version of a man who was widely recognized as a genius but one with a prickly persona.</s>HAYLEY TSUKAYAMA, "THE WASHINGTON POST": If you're going to watch a biography, you want to learn a little bit more about what makes someone tick and about what drives their personality. And I think in a lot of ways by taking on so much, this movie failed to really accomplish that.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Jobs died in 2011 of cancer. His legacy is still being shaped.</s>TSUKAYAMA: If you had made a movie about JFK's life a year or two after his assassination, that would paint a very different picture of JFK at that time than it would if we made it now. And so I think this movie will capture sort of the affection for Steve Jobs and the admiration for Steve Jobs that a lot of people have, but in terms of capturing sort of an accurate portrayal of where he fits in history or of who he really was, it may not be as good at that.</s>MCPIKE (voice-over): Movie-goers may get another shot at a Jobs movie soon. There's a competing biopic in the works by Aaron Sorkin. It's based on Walter Isaacson's authorized biography.</s>MCPIKE: And, Jake, the movie opens tonight. I think I'm going to see it eventually. Maybe it will psych me up to learn how to use this iPhone 5 that I still obviously don't know how to use.</s>TAPPER: You're still struggling with that. All right, Erin McPike, thank you so much. In other pop news, I've heard of no shirt, no shoes, no service, but no beard? Apparently at one New York hotel, yes. "Duck Dynasty" star Chase Robertson was in town this week promoting the start of the fourth season when he got escorted out his hotel for what he called facial profiling.</s>TAPPER: "Duck Dynasty" fans, do not flood the streets of New York with your anger. The Robertson clan said the man was "very nice," and it was all just a big misunderstanding. Coming up, somewhere agents Scully and Mulder are saying, "I told you so." A declassified NSA document now acknowledges the existence of Area 51. We'll tell you exactly where to find it. Stay with us.