Swiped, 2025.
Directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg.
Starring Lily James, Ben Schnetzer, Myha’la, Jackson White, Dan Stevens, Ian Colletti, Mary Neely, Ana Yi Puig, Aidan Laprete, Pedro Correa, Coral Peña, Pierson Fodé, Hannah Marks, Olivia Rose Keegan, Hunter Sansone, Larken Woodward, Gabe Kessler, Dermot Mulroney, and Clea DuVall.
SYNOPSIS:
Inspired by the story of Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and former CEO of dating platform Bumble.
Touting not just apps as the future, but the game-ification of them as the future is the kind of depressing statement one might assume a film might take advantage of and interrogate at a societal level. That goes double considering the apps in focus are of the online dating variety, with Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s Swiped serving as a biopic on Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd (Lily James), who got her start co-founding Tinder within a toxic tech bro working environment.
Co-writing alongside Bill Parker and Kim Caramele, Rachel Lee Goldenberg is more interested in taking this material in the direction of girl boss empowerment, which would be fine if the story didn’t feel so false in its presentation of these events. For clarification, this film also works overtime to emphasize that, while it is inspired by truth, it is also heavily dramatized (presumably through composite characters and other means). It’s a distinction that is felt when, practically out of nowhere, the culture at the tech bro company shifts into something misogynistic, with a boss/boyfriend flipping a switch into psychopath mode against the Whitney. Since the film also frequently jumps through time, these shifts come across more as forced dramatization than genuine insight.
It also must be clarified that this does not mean Whitney’s personal story is not believable. It absolutely is, and she deserves to be believed. However, this film’s version of the events is often difficult to buy into, as if everyone was more concerned with focus testing it for the empowerment crowd, resulting in a hollow portrayal. It’s a movie that repeatedly emphasizes that society was and still is headed in a direction where everything is game-ified for maximum engagement, including online dating apps, without delving into the negatives of that. Even when exploring Whitney’s actual dating life, it reduces one partner to an absolute nothing of a character, someone who unintentionally hilariously exists to stand off in the background and be pushed onto viewers as one of the so-called good ones, stressing that the self-made billionaire also got her happy ending, which, oddly enough, had nothing to do with online dating.
This isn’t a movie about what Tinder and Bumble have done for the dating scene (one vilified for its neglect of addressing rampant sexual harassment and the other put on a pedestal for its female-forward approach to making connections), but about how Whitney Wolfe, who is introduced as someone wanting to do good for the world through an app servicing humanitarian connections, dropped those ambitions and succeeded in the dating app industry. Yes, that’s the angle they’re going with here, which is infuriating in a year when Celine Song’s Materialists has already taken a sledgehammer to this entire enterprise for turning dating into a corrosive game that’s more about comparing and checking boxes than actual human connection. The horror stories these apps have given users? That’s turned into an uncomfortable joke of one college graduate woman working for Tinder during its startup days, sifting through and removing reported male genitalia pictures.
The one saving grace element here (performances aside) is that Swiped does call out such toxic working environments while also entering into a conversation about accountability and how the offenders aren’t necessarily always putting their problematic behavior on display in front of those, especially women, who would furiously object. Roughly over halfway into the film, after everything about working with her male coworkers and superiors on Tinder has gone to hell, Whitney is poached by European businessman Andrey (another unrecognizable transformation from Dan Stevens), who has already cornered the online dating scene market in those territories but would like her skills to expand into America. He is aware that everything, from the Tinder name to the more modern and addictive swiping feature to selling such a concept to a younger demographic, was all her doing, and he shows her great respect while giving her and her team of women partners whatever resources they need.
Since this is based on a true story, it’s also fine to imply that it doesn’t mean that there are no skeletons in his closet. Watching Whitney navigate both scandals and the juxtapositions between both situations is the film’s strongest element.
The issue here is that it’s easy to forgive Whitney for some of her mistakes, such as trying to fit in with the boys before the toxicity ramps up into overdrive. It works for the girl boss angle, but that’s not what’s compelling about Swiped or Whitney Wolfe. Tinder and Bumble have drastically changed the dating landscape, bringing good and irreparable damage. Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s swipes left on that complexity for something surface-level and generically inspiring.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
