“Swiped”

Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s “Swiped” tells the story of the youngest female self-made billionaire Whitney Wolfe Herd, the woman behind both Tinder and Bumble. This is a pretty standard startup biopic that features a big idea, early success, toxic fallout, reinvention, and redemption. But what could have made it stand out is if Goldenberg had chosen to focus on what Whitney had to go through as a young woman in tech and how she turned that pain into power. This is a feminist movie that never was.

The movie starts in the early 2010s, when Whitney (Lily James) joins what’s eventually rebranded as Tinder. She’s brilliant at marketing and basically makes the app blow up on college campuses. Just as her career takes off, the sexism and harassment from her colleagues becomes unbearable.

James is easy to watch here, giving Whitney both grit and vulnerability by showing someone who’s smart, ambitious, and resilient, but also deeply affected by the toxic environment she fought against. She’s well cast and does a good job with the material, even if it’s boring and shallow.

The film mixes drama with humor so it never gets so heavy that it feels like homework, and the playful digs at startup culture and dating app absurdities keep things moving along. Still, it’s not a groundbreaking film. The rise-fall-rise again formula feels very familiar, and if you’ve seen other Silicon Valley biopics, you’ll know what happens next.

The parts of the film that manage to work well enough are when Goldenberg tells Whitney’s story with empathy. It’s empowering without being preachy, accessible without being shallow, and James makes sure you stay invested the whole way through (but there’s only so much she can do with the thin material). Women will especially see a lot of truth in what Whitney faced, making the ordeal and her ultimate triumph feel satisfying. Whitney really did deserve a better movie, however.

“Swiped” isn’t a great movie, but it’s an engaging, relatable look at one woman’s fight to change the rules in a male-dominated industry. It’s not really worth your time unless you are particularly interested in the subject matter and even then, it mostly feels hollow.

By: Louisa Moore