Swiped

While The Social Network (2010) lambasted tech bro toxicity from within, Swiped considers the perspective of a woman struggling to break into a space overseen by unprofessional douche bags. They are similar films in that they both involve the origin story of a popular online platform: Facebook in the former, Bumble in the latter. This biopic is only partly about Whitney Wolfe (played by a solid Lily James), who would go on to found the company dedicated to making online dating safe for women; it doubles as a brand biopic. But as the story weaves between Wolfe’s ambitions, her key role in launching Tinder, and her eventual falling out with Tinder’s bro-y inner circle, it becomes increasingly clear that director Rachel Lee Goldenberg and her two co-writers (Bill Parker, Kim Caramele) don’t have the breadth nor the detail to make their story more than a Wikipedia-style overview of the events. Still, given that docu-series, true crime, and based-on-a-true-story dramas dominate in the age of streaming, Swiped will doubtlessly connect with some viewers when it debuts on Hulu. 

After sneaking her way into an exclusive party for primarily male tech types, the recent college graduate, Whitney, meets Sean (Ben Schnetzer), who co-founded a moderately successful incubator with two other guys that focuses on gamification apps. Although she initially wants to use her tech skills to help orphanages and clean up oil spills, Sean hires her as his marketing director to help launch Tinder. And after she sees considerable success in pitching the swipe-centric dating app to colleges, Sean makes her a co-founder. Goldenberg portrays the infectious momentum of a startup with zippy camerawork and montages, until, predictably, things get complicated. She starts dating her fellow cofounder, Justin (Jackson White), who turns out to be a nutcase. The same goes for the whole boy’s club at Tinder, who shrug off user complaints about incessant dick pics on the app and openly call Whitney a “whore” after she breaks it off with Justin. Confronted by the reality that no one—except her female coworkers, Tisha (Myha’la) and Beth (Mary Neely)—has her back, Whitney ends up suing the company and Sean eventually withdraws her founder status. 

Since Wolfe remains bound from discussing her experiences at Tinder by an NDA—the shield of true scoundrels—the writers claim to have drawn from public sources, as noted in an end credits disclaimer. Fair enough. There’s no arguing with Swiped’s message about the lack of accountability in the oddly retrograde corporate atmosphere perpetuated by so-called disruptors. Nor with its message that “people can be more than one thing”—evidenced in Whitney’s Bumble backer, Russian fatcat Andrey Andreev (Dan Stevens), who seems swell until he isn’t. All the while, Goldenberg barely gets into her characters’ heads, which is somewhat understandable if Wolfe is barred from sharing her experience, but less so concerning everyone else. Goldenberg portrays the young executive’s nightmarish experience as a series of maddening and ultimately inspiring events, albeit with little depth. The movie races through what happened with a speed that does the material a disservice, suggesting Swiped might’ve worked better as a Hulu limited series like The Dropout (2022), or at least relied more on poetic license to enrich the experience.