Swiped Parent Guide

In real life, Whitney Wolfe Herd (Lily James) is the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Swiped tells a fictionalized version of her story, following her as she starts as an idealistic new graduate trying to break into tech startups, moving on to her rise and fall as a co-founder of “Tinder”, and through to her creation of “Bumble”.

The best biopics have something interesting to say, or at the very least have a story to tell in an interesting way. Unfortunately, Swiped always feels like it’s just scratching the surface of a deeper story. The script dives headfirst into the misogyny of the tech industry, which is important to talk about, but a lot of the gender discrimination themes come across as somehow both heavy-handed and shallow, focusing on the actions of individuals rather than exploring larger systemic issues. Herd’s character development is deeply entrenched in the “girl boss” stereotype, which unfortunately flattens her character.

Disappointingly, Swiped is so fixated on fulfilling genre tropes that it is too predictable to be a compelling film. The “rise, fall, and rise again” narrative feels worn out, even with the gender discrimination messaging. Ultimately the production feels thin, though I can’t argue that it’s not well made from a technical standpoint. This isn’t a bad movie by any stretch; just so average and clichéd that it has no hope of standing out amongst much smarter scripts like The Social Network.

Given the subject matter, this film clearly isn’t appropriate for family viewing. There is a lot of swearing and drinking, on top of discussion of and some brief images of unsolicited nudes. The feminist messages are extremely basic but could be a good introduction for people who aren’t familiar with workplace gender discrimination and harassment, especially in the tech industry. Though I found the film clichéd and thin, it’s not an unenjoyable 110 minutes, and I can’t say I didn’t learn anything.

About author

Savannah Sillito

Savannah Sillito is a librarian with a master's in library science, a bachelor's degree in English, and a certificate in early childhood education. She enjoys nonfiction books, travel, and is a staunch proponent of the Oxford comma.