Swiped
Review by Mark Woodring
I’m a bit confused by the fact that the studio is choosing to call Swiped a film about the founding of Bumble, when in reality it’s a film about the rise and fall of Tinder in the toxic tech environment, one which persists to this day…
But that’s for the studio to reconsider, I suppose; I just want to talk about Lily James as she leads Swiped through its paces.
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
110 Minutes, Rated ?
Written by Bill Parker, Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Kim Caramele
Directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Synopsis:
Inspired by the story of Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and former CEO of dating platform Bumble.
And lead this film she does.
As Whitney Wolfe, James perfectly embodies the idealistic young woman intent on making the world a better place before getting slowly digested by the machine that is the tech start-up world. Originally hired Chief Marketing Officer for the CARDIFY app, she quickly finds herself immersed instead in the burgeoning world of MATCHBOX, a dating app being developed by her company that nobody wants to use.
Breaking through the hesitancy of millennials to online date, she quickly becomes a “co-founder” of Tinder (the name she proposes and the company adopts), watching as the app grows to the mythical level of ONE MILLION users, signifying widespread usage and success. Of course, Tinder isn’t all she might have hoped it would be, with the Sochi Olympics gaining notoriety as THE place for tinder hook-ups, and watching as the term “Tinder whores” becomes widespread, alongside the inevitable and pervasive d*ck-pics.
As the only woman, Whitney tries to balance her ambition for both her career and the app with her need to do the right thing and defend the women who both use and support Tinder. She fails, but this is the compelling storyline of the film for me.
Think a kind of reverse Fair Play.
Inevitably, the situation devolves and she leaves the company, with a lawsuit settlement imposing an NDA to keep her from defending herself against commentary from Tinder about her, ruining her career and driving her to the brink of, well, let’s call it “emotional insolvency.”
It’s not pretty.
James is simply wonderful at giving us all this in a gesture, an expression, a fumbled line… all top-notch stuff, to be sure.
For me, though, the movies makes its turn into her chance to start up a competing dating app, eventually called Bumble, with women at the center and the driving force of the company, and Swiped feels like a by-the-numbers “woman in business” film. That’s not to say the performances in this section aren’t good (Dan Stevens as the European dating app God who finances Bumble is great), but the story simply isn’t as compelling as her time at Tinder.
Finally, though, Whitney’s situation comes full circle, and the circumstances which drove her out of Tinder rear their ugly heads and she is forced to deal with them again, and the question becomes “will she do anything different this time?”
An amazing cinematic effort in making what is effectively a biopic without the input of its subject, as Whitney is still muzzled by the NDA and so cannot comment on her time with Tinder at all.
Swiped is available exclusively on Hulu and stars Lily James, Pierson Fode, Dan Stevens, Clea Duvall, Myha’la, Jackson White, Joely fisher, Ben Schnetzer, Mary Neely, and Ian Colletti.
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