Movie Review: Swiped (Disney+)

By John Corrado

Swiped is director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s glossy biopic of Whitney Wolfe (played by Lily James), a co-founder of ubiquitous dating app Tinder and the creator of Bumble.

We first meet Wolfe at a Los Angeles meet-up for tech investors, trying to get financial backers for an app that connects orphanages in other countries with volunteers. But Wolfe’s humanitarian goals are swiftly forgotten about and never mentioned again, once the dating app idea comes to fruition in the film.

It’s here that she meets Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), who invites her to join his tech startup as a marketing manager. This is where the idea for a dating app is born, which is already being workshopped at the company. “Matchbox” is what the developers are calling it. Whitney is the one who suggests a different fiery name; “Tinder.” It’s cleaner, you can practically hear her say.

Whitney is named a co-founder of the app, alongside Sean’s buddy Justin (Jackson White), but isn’t given proper credit for her contributions in the media. A romantic relationship forms with Justin that turns into a nightmare, and complicates her role at the company. Andrey Andreev (Dan Stevens), a Russian investor, comes calling, wanting to bring her onboard at his company, responsible for the European dating app Badoo.

Through this, Bumble was born. Goldenberg’s film offers a very conventional telling of this story, taking us through the basic beats with a series of exposition-heavy scenes, punctuated by cheesy moments when “eureka” ideas happen. Because Wolfe had to sign an NDA when leaving Rad’s company, she wasn’t involved in the film, so this is a largely unauthorized telling of her story.

The film is indebted to movies like The Social Network, but the glossy, streaming-friendly version of it; it’s own characters are never that interesting, and the tone feels all over the place. It’s a fast-paced portrait of a tech startup taking off, that also tries to explore serious issues about toxic workplaces and sexual harassment.

When new revelations come to light in the last act, the film rushes through them. Not completely glossing them over, but also giving the distinct sense that the filmmakers wish they weren’t a factor, because they complicate the straightforward “girlboss” narrative the film is desperate to push. There is a darker telling of this story that leans in more to the cutthroat ambitions of the tech sector, including of Wolfe herself. But that version would take away from the film’s often bouncy tone.

As such, we get a largely one-dimensional portrayal of Wolfe, with the film seemingly disinterested in turning her into an actually complex character, because girl power, or something. James does her best with the role, but we wish she was given a more fleshed out version of this character to play, beyond the “inspiring female billionaire.”

It can be mildly entertaining as a streaming movie, but we wish for a more fleshed out and nuanced approach to this subject. Furthermore, the screenplay by Goldenberg, Bill Parker and Kim Caramele doesn’t really want to grapple with the negatives of online dating itself, beyond a basic condemnation of the harassment that happens on them, taking a Bumble-solved-all-the-problems approach that borders on feeling like a paid advertisement.