Sliding Comments – IGN
Blog Andrew Joseph 19 Sep , 2025 0
Now available on Hulu in the United States.
As part of her photography, brush Representing director Rachel Lee Goldenberg's major leap. Goldenberg launched two more prominent features in 2020, including Valley Girls and Untreated, just because their launch will be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Five years later, she now has Disney money (although in the 20th-century studio name), which is certainly her most happy project to date, winning the Toronto Film Festival premiere before the launch of Hulu and Hulu and Disney+ Worldwide. But the end result is a good movie that could have been more powerful if it was willing to take as much risk as the theme.
Swiped tells the story of Whitney Wolfe (named after herd after her husband after marrying Michael Herd in 2017), known for his role as an integral part of Tinder's rise and is also the founder and CEO of Bumble. As a key player in creating two largest dating apps that exist, it is not unfair to say that Wolf has had an astronomical impact on global culture, especially for a younger generation whose entire dating life is filtered through such apps. However, you may not fully understand the impact by watching “swipe cards,” which focuses more on Wolf’s microscopic consequences in the company’s personal history, especially her sexual harassment lawsuit against Tinder’s former colleague, who then served as head of Bumble.
The dramatic arc of Wolfe's rise, fall and ultimately return to the prominent has undoubtedly made three behavioral structures easy, but it also makes a film too basic to achieve thematic justice. It's an interesting story, and it's an interesting story in its own right, certainly reflecting the toxic and misogynistic tendency of tech company culture. However, if Wolf is undoubtedly sympathetic because her accomplices treat her in the way she tries to name herself in a male-dominated workspace, the film never gives Wolf herself enough to make her three-dimensional. Swiped's Whitney Wolfe is a related character because of her struggles, but she never became a round character because of her choice.
However, this is not because of a lack of attempts in performance. Lily James, who has a reputation as a Cinderella and baby driver, has been an underrated actor for years and has performed better than the script deserves. James's most eye-catching attribute is the one that appears on screen and on stage (yelling her excellent job at Eve Harrington of Ivo Van Hove 2019 All All All All All Ever), whose ability is that she sneaks over a scene with small gestures that eventually blends into a bigger moment. This ability to make the audience sad makes her so fascinating to watch, but her attempt to increase her depth to Wolf is not always supported by the writing. We understand why she is good at convinceing people to try her products, but Charm can only play a role if she has reasons to treat her with skepticism.
This will become a problem when the movie is obliged to give Wolf a “soul night” beat that he has not obtained. Although one of Goldberg's best director touched was how she put together a crazy montage of Wolfe's life when she became the internet after the sexual harassment suit, followed by a meeting with former working friend Tisha (Myha'la), who told her that she didn't have enough women to help her in the state of other women. James’ angry response to this (and the inherent racial dynamics of a white woman, snapping up a black woman trying to take responsibility for her actions) is one of the best moments in the film, because it feels emotionally honest about Wolf’s failure without getting rid of the real abuse Wolf suffered.
But Wolfe and Tisha’s next encounter after a hastily apology did not uncover more of the essence of this thread, but instead restored her identity as a “distinctive feminist tech leader” and further mentioned any wrongdoing. The movie mainly skipped Bumble's actual development at the time, and from shoebox operation to 35 million user applications was basically a scene transition that only made the problem worse. That was the era when Wolfe developed his own wealth foundation Age 31 years old. No one would accumulate this kind of money without serious compromises in the process, but the film shows Wolf's promotion as an easy thing because this time the woman did it.
The film also never struggled to deal with the fact that Wolf’s impact on the entire world is arguably a net negative. Of course, many couples have already made connections through dating apps, but said the app also heavily commodified the concept of encountering potential romantic partners and judged others as games and monetization nightmare for many unfortunate users based on a few seconds of visual impression. Wolfe directly grasped the situation, but never considered anything worth checking. It's a shame, because a better film will trust the audience to make more fully stating their own words based on their behavior rather than prescribing the audience's feelings.