It doesn’t say much for our modern world that, when presented with the cheerful, empowering origin story of a billionairess, one’s first reaction may not be to come away cheered or empowered, but to feel certain its broad trajectory, arcing upward like a big smile, is glossing over darker truths. But it doesn’t say much for “Swiped” either, that this overly sunny biopic of dating-app entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe, directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg (“Unpregnant”), should provide so little substance beneath its shiny surface. Wolfe’s particular genius seems to have been for marketing. Maybe it’s appropriate that a movie about her plays like a marketing exercise: simplified, sanitized, suspect.
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We meet Wolfe (Lily James) as she is gatecrashing some beachside tech event, anxious to pitch an app that connects volunteers with orphanages across the globe. That goes down exactly as you might expect with a bunch of 20-something tech bros more intent on pounding energy drinks and getting laid. Despondently, she leaves, but by chance gets chatting to a less sleazy type, who runs a Bay Area incubator. Sean (Ben Schnetzer) spots potential in Wolfe — call it moxie or pluck or something similarly patronizing — and gives her a shot. Wolfe aces her tryout when she saves a meeting with a hesitant client by suggesting he think of Cardify, the loyalty-card app she’s peddling, in terms of how it would work if he was on a date … with her.
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So perhaps it’s natural that as Cardify loses steam, Wolfe’s attention turns to a dating app that’s still in the development stage. This is the era of “gamification” and soon the gameplay-like fundaments are working well, especially its pioneering left-for-no, right-for-yes swiping action. But Sean isn’t wild about the name. “Matchbox” sounds too close to then-market leader Match.com. “What about ‘Tinder’?” suggests Wolfe perkily.
With DP Doug Emmett’s streaming-friendly, blandly prettified camerawork in its natural bright register, there follows the giddy high of Tinder’s early expansion, powered by Wolfe and best friend Tisha (Myha’la) enacting her smart college-campus launching strategy. In parallel, there’s the giddiness of new love. Justin (Jackson White), an old buddy of Sean’s, has been brought onto the project and he and Whitney are soon, er, swiping right all over each other. But as they tick toward the landmark of their millionth subscriber (literally, the extremely 2010s tech-startup office, all pool tables and scooters, also has a large mechanical ticker displaying current membership numbers), her success engenders his jealousy.
Sean names Wolfe a Tinder co-founder (this will later be contested and will lead to an out-of-court settlement; we’re assured that “Swiped” had no input from Wolfe and she did not infract the terms of her NDA). But after she dumps Justin, whose belittling behavior had become unbearable, Sean sides with his bro over his … well, let’s just say in the breakup’s messy, abusive aftermath, Whitney overhears herself called a “whore” by a gaggle of sniggering male colleagues.
This section is by far the most interesting, as Wolfe is inexorably squeezed out and we get a taste of how isolating and humbling it was to be on the receiving end of the old-school sexism to which she had thought herself personally immune. It’s also the only time we see Wolfe admit to any cracks in her wholesome, take-one-for-the-team façade. There is less “you-go-girl” and more “Gone Girl” in her confession that it felt good to be the only woman in the Tinder boys’ club, and that keeping her seat at that table led her to make more than one compromise on the safety and protection of her female colleagues, and of Tinder’s dick-pic-plagued user base alike.
But her moments of contrition don’t last long, and soon become mere fuel — perhaps even tinder — for a new fire of ethically-minded innovation that’s been lit beneath her. After a few false starts, the idea for Bumble is born, and Russian mega-investor Andrey Andreev (a sneakily funny Dan Stevens fielding yet another accent) funds it. But when Andreev is himself involved in a #MeToo-adjacent scandal, Wolfe is put on the spot, an aspect of her ascension around which the “Swiped” screenplay, co-written by Goldenberg, Bill Parker and Kim Caramele, treads so carefully as to feel deeply insincere.
But that is the problem with the film overall. The two original ideas we hear from Wolfe seem equally starry-eyed: the orphanage app and another called “Merci,” which is expressly for people to pay compliments to each other. Quite how that would work in the real world is anyone’s guess, but “Swiped” could have been built by a similar algorithm for all the constant compliments it pays to its subject. And, by extension, to whatever audience out there still believes that a can-do attitude, a kind heart and a bright smile of sisterly solidarity are all it took to mint the world’s youngest female billionaire.