There are two remarkable stories contained in “BlackBerry”: The first story is about how a tech genius in Canada created the smartphone market by inventing a device that could take phone calls, surf the internet and receive email. The second is about how the BlackBerry went from a status symbol to old news — becoming, as the movie puts it, “the cell phone you had before you had an iPhone.”

Having lived through that history, we take it for granted. But stop for a minute to consider how unusual it is for a company to dominate a market and then disappear.

Remember that whenBarack Obamatook office as president in 2009, he asked the Secret Service to figure out a way he could still use his BlackBerry. Yet a decade later, almost nobody had a BlackBerry. Today, according to the movie, BlackBerry makes up zero percent of smartphone sales.

“BlackBerry” is not the only business origin story to come out this year, following “Tetris,” about the video game, and “Air,” about Nike’s launching of the Air Jordan shoe line. All three fictionalize a real story, but like “Air” — yet unlike “Tetris” — “BlackBerry” doesn’t overdo it. The film finds comedy in the ill-fated brand’s rise and fall, with seemingly each character’s personality close to those of their real-life prototypes.

Matt Johnson wrote and directed “BlackBerry,” based on a book by Jacquie McNish. He also acts in it. The curious thing is that Johnson plays neither Mike Lazaridis, who invented the BlackBerry, nor Jim Balsillie, the co-CEO who figured out how to get entrepreneurs to invest in the product. Instead, Johnson plays Doug Fregin, Mike’s best friend, a guy who is consistently passionate but wrong about everything,

Doug wants to keep the fun going in the workplace, not realizing that there’s no time for the company’s weekly movie night when they’re racing the clock to get a product out there before their competitors do.

虽然赚的钱永远不可能entertaining as movies like to pretend, the broad outlines of “BlackBerry” seem to comport with the facts. Mike (Jay Baruchel) starts the film already knowing how to bring his multibillion-dollar idea to fruition. But without Jim’s way around a boardroom, he can’t succeed. Likewise, Jim needs Mike’s rigorous insistence on quality to keep him from going to market prematurely.

In the movie, Baruchel’s shy, naive and sincere Mike makes a good pair with Glenn Howerton, who, as Jim, is comically devious, driven and imperious.

“黑莓”壮举证明它的存在ure film by being more entertaining than a documentary would be on the same subject. At the same time, it doesn’t quite tell you everything you want to know: Why did BlackBerry ultimately fail? Why did it become the Neanderthal to the iPhone’s Cro-Magnon?

The movie doesn’t spell it out, but it seems that BlackBerry was simply out-engineered. Apple and Android started making a better product, and BlackBerry was ultimately left behind — in the cemetery plot next to Myspace.

Still, if you ever had a BlackBerry, there’s something not only entertaining but nostalgic in watching this movie.

My Sicilian grandmother loved to talk about how amazed she was the first time she saw indoor plumbing. Perhaps your grandparents talked about their first experience watching television. Human beings seem to enjoy reliving their astonishment at things they now take for granted. So if you’re old enough, “BlackBerry” will remind you of how magical technology once seemed, and how thrilling it was the first time you got an email on your cell phone.

Reach Mick LaSalle: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com