Lily James steps into the role of Whitney Wolfe Herd – the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire in Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Swiped. Wolfe built her empire in the world of dating apps, navigating sexism, office politics, and personal hardships to become a co-founder of Tinder and the founder/CEO of Bumble. Her journey takes center stage in writer/director Goldenberg’s third feature film which embellishes Wolfe’s life with some dramatized elements, notably without Wolfe’s involvement in the process. Starring Lily James and Dan Stevens, Swiped made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, before netting a wide release on Hulu.
The movie begins with a young Whitney Wolfe attempting to network in the LA tech industry, but instead being met with overt sexism. She hears the kinds of comments that will make you squirm in your seat as you watch – things that are uncomfortable to hear, but are unfortunately believable. As Whitney gets her breakthrough in the tech industry, the misogyny doesn’t go away – it shifts. The previously overt sexism is still obvious, but now it’s in the form of shameless exclusion and inappropriate workplace habits.
As Whitney starts her first big LA tech job, she is seen struggling with the coffee maker at work – a simple physical representation of being unfamiliar and out of place. After a brief montage, however, Whitney makes a perfect looking cup – a somewhat cheesy and cliché sign that she’s now comfortable in her new role. While this visual initially seems like a harmlessly fun and clear way to demonstrate surface-level progression, it is actually subtly setting the tone for the film’s broader storytelling approach: neatly resolved arcs that oversimplify complex ideas. Unfortunately these cut and dry situations get seemingly more and more common as the story progresses and doesn’t have time to wrap everything up with any sort of nuance. The film does a good job of building stakes with real issues, but basically every situation presents very clear “right” and “wrong” choices for the protagonist, allowing it to be wrapped up concisely. The movie deals with very real and important topics, but is usually trite in its display of these issues. Swiped deserves credit for tackling the themes it does; it just could have been much more effective with the addition of depth.
Lily James’ protagonist stands out as a fairly intriguing character with pretty straightforward, yet still entertaining character development. However, surrounding her is a cast of coworkers who feel like caricatures of exaggerated stereotypes. Most of the guys are exactly how you’d imagine a generic 2010s tech bro, and the sexism mirrors decade old stereotypes. The “likeable” characters mostly exist to conveniently point out the right choice in each scenario. I’m afraid the real story inspiration forced writer Goldenberg to take what information she could find on the real people involved and just fill out the missing parts of their personality with recycled cliches and stereotypes. Even the characters who change over time, do so as more of a jump from simply “good” to “bad” or vice versa.
Overall, Swiped‘s attempt to tell Whitney Wolfe’s story is a pretty entertaining ride headlined by Lily James’ and Dan Stevens’ performances, spotlighting issues that are still relevant today. Yet the film’s reliance on surface-level storytelling, exaggerated stereotypes, and neatly packaged arcs keep it from fully capturing the complexity of its real-world inspiration. It comes off as generic – the type of the movie you’ll forget about in a few days, despite its heavy themes.
