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Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780780627710
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
ISBN: 0780627717
Label: Turner Home Ent
Manufacturer: Turner Home Ent
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Turner Home Ent
Release Date: May 16, 2000
Running Time: 95 minutes
Sales Rank: 9585
Studio: Turner Home Ent
Theatrical Release Date: June 20, 1999
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
This dramatization of the tangled history of Apple Computer and Microsoft, based on a book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, hits enough of the right notes to make its failures all the more frustrating. The script follows the entwined paths of Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates with a pointed sense of the cultural divide between the hip, self-absorbed Apple cofounder and the brilliant alpha geek behind Microsoft's eventual software empire, contrasting the Mac's countercultural underpinnings with the PC's more strait-laced origins. But Pirates of Silicon Valley seemingly can't decide whether it wants to be a serious-minded history of these key figures in the personal computer revolution or a trashy wallow in the more ignoble foibles of its principals. As a result, it falls short of exacting history while never achieving the guilty pleasure it might have.
If Gates has become synonymous with corporate conquest at its most striking, Pirates' interest lies more with Jobs, given a nervous energy and flashes of adolescent selfishness by Noah Wyle, who benefits from a reasonable physical resemblance to the Apple chief. Eyewear and a comb-over do nearly as well for Anthony Michael Hall, who also grafts some of Bill Gates's better-known mannerisms onto his performance and renders Gates as a smart if socially maladroit entrepreneur who, like Jobs, provides the ambition and business savvy to exploit his partner's computing talents. There are a few fanciful touches (Ballmer and Wozniak become Greek choruses, addressing the viewer as they comment on the principals), but the story plays out in straightforward fashion. It's tantalizing to consider how the Apple/PC melodrama might have fared with an edgier, more openly satirical script. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - If your a geek like me then you will love this movie
I loved this movie because it gives the Hollywood treatment to a computer geek fairy tale. Good movie, great portrayals, really helps you to understand the Apple/Microsoft/IBM/Xerox dynamic.
Rating:  - A Fun Little Romp That's Incomplete
The film is a great piece of entertainment, a composite of fact and fiction. Enjoy it for what it is, warned of what it is NOT: a complete history of the personal computer.
Rating: - West Coast Wizards
I enjoyed this video story of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I am sure there is a lot more to the story of these two men but it was fun. Mark Twain commented on War and Peace by Tolstoy saying it did not have a motorboat race. Can't have everything!?! Is there a secret message here?
John Cutler Anderson, Lucky (nickname)
Rating: - Historical Movie!
This is the epic, dorky, funny, and dramatic tale of the rise of Mac & Apple over IBM. I first saw this movie at my school, but we didn't get to finish it. I loved it so much I went ahead and bought it, and've watched it a few good times since then. I love it.
And take my word for it - I'm not one of those people easy to please with a movie. Get it, and you won't regret it. 'Nuff said.
Rating: - Not just for geeks!
For nerds, these two led interesting lives. Steve Jobs may make for a more believable rebel but once you see this documentary you'll see he had his own wild side. Very accurate and keeps a good pace.
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