Is this corporation my friend? Is my dating app feminist? Is this CEO really challenging the dominant power structures or only doing so when it benefits them? There’s a version of “Swiped,” the new film about the creation of Tinder and then Bumble, that engages with these questions. Unfortunately, this is not that film.
If you were also hoping for a work that has something really interesting to say about the current state of technology, dating, and how the former influences the latter, you’ll have to keep looking. Though this film does gesture towards urgent issues, like misogyny being endemic to the modern tech industry, and is genuine in how it seeks to talk about them in a more crowd-pleasing package, it never amounts to being more than one note. Despite clearly wanting to be similar to David Fincher’s enduring “The Social Network,” Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s film merely has its heart in the right place and could use a significant upgrade in how it executes everything it puts forth.
“Swiped” is a broad biopic more than it is an incisive, sociologically driven drama. Making matters worse is that the person being profiled, Whitney Wolfe Herd (Lily James), is someone the film seems reluctant to depict as flawed in a way that can’t be solved in a quick little speech. There’s still something engaging about seeing her go through the male-dominated tech world and deal with countless indignities to individually find success rather than pull people up with her, though this feels like only superficial lip service that is soon left by the wayside.
It then tries to lean hard into the idea of Bumble being about opening up a conversation about making dating not just better for women, but genuinely safer. The trouble is the conversation is always only with itself. Even when it throws in a conflict about standing by your values when it’s hard near the end, it’s resolved so quickly that it never feels earned. As we get taken through one flatly lit montage after another, with forced needle drops galore where we see how great everything ends up being, as if this app fixed all problems in the world, you start to feel like you’re watching a commercial rather than a genuine film. A commercial for what is a good question, but it certainly isn’t for this film. In fact, you mostly get the sense that Herd is always selling us something about herself.
That’s again where you can almost see a version of “Swiped” that’s more morally complex and truthful in how it explores the way people, even those with initially good intentions, can give up their principles when it serves them. Where it loses steam is when it increasingly plays like an extended hagiography of Herd. The film decides she really is, ultimately, pretty great, rather than presenting a complicated, honest portrait of a flawed person trying to do her best. It’s flatly inspiring on the outside, but insipid on the inside, reducing the whole thing to feeling like a vanity project in disguise. For every moment it holds Herd’s feet to the fire, it puts out any greater spark that it could have desperately used to give the film some life.
All of this is to say, “Swiped,” we need to talk. I’m afraid things are just not working out. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m just not feeling any sort of connection between us. I’m sure there is someone great out there that will be swept away by your charms, but I’m just not one of them. Whatever you’re selling, it’s just not something I’m buying. Still, I wish you the best of luck if you choose to get on the apps because, honestly, it’s still a nightmare out there.
“Swiped” will be available to stream on Hulu on September 19 in the U.S.
