Certificate: 15

Running Time: 110 mins

UK Distributor: Disney+

UK Release Date: 19 September 2025

WHO’S IN SWIPED?

Lily James, Dan Stevens, Myha’la, Jackson White, Ben Schnetzer, Pierson Fodé, Ian Colletti, Mary Neely, Ana Yi Puig, Aidan Laprete, Pedro Correa, Coral Peña

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Rachel Lee Goldenberg (director, writer), Kim Caramele and Bill Parker (writers), Jennifer Gibgot, Lily James and Andrew Panay (producers), Chanda Dancy (composer), Doug Emmett (cinematographer), Julia Wong (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Whitney Wolfe Herd (James), the co-founder of Tinder, launches a competing dating app…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON SWIPED?

Ever notice how movies about modern-day tech revelations always seem to give off a similar energy? Since The Social Network dramatised the behind-the-scenes headaches of getting Facebook off the ground, films like BlackBerry and Dumb Money have attempted to apply the same type of fast-paced, wit-laced mannerisms of David Fincher’s direction and Aaron Sorkin’s script to their own depictions of the BlackBerry phone, the GameStop short squeeze et al, which has led to a lot of them feeling like the same movie, and often nowhere near as good as the one they’re all aping.

While it wouldn’t be accurate to say that Swiped, director and co-writer Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s take on the rise and fall and rise again of a pioneering dating app giant, is yet another carbon-copy of The Social Network, it is certainly taking a lot of cues from Fincher’s film, narrative or otherwise. But Goldenberg’s film isn’t able to crack the algorithmic code that made The Social Network the revered Oscar-winning classic it’s become, and as a result it ends up feeling just as thin and artificial as your average online dating profile.

Beginning in 2012, Swiped sees recent college graduate Whitney Wolfe (Lily James) trying and failing to secure investors for her non-profit business, until she’s lured by Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer) to be his marketing director for a start-up company he’s running, which eventually evolves into the dating app we all know as Tinder, a name that Whitney herself comes up with. But despite Tinder’s rapid-fire success and Whitney’s informal promotion to company co-founder, she finds herself increasingly put off by the toxic workplace she helped to form, as well as that of the pretty nasty and misogynistic behaviour she endures from some of her fellow co-founders, leading to her unceremonious dumping from her position. Soon, with the backing of Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev (Dan Stevens), Whitney fires back by launching her own dating app named Bumble, one that gives women more of an opportunity to choose their own matches by making the first move, thus changing the rules of dating for all.

Since the real-life Whitney Wolfe Herd is apparently still under an ironclad NDA from her tumultuous time at Tinder, the film makes sure to remind you that much of what we see is fictionalised, opening and closing with carefully-worded litigious statements that some of the names and dates have been altered for dramatic purposes. While it’s perfectly understandable why director Goldenberg went this route, the script itself is so light and convenient in its structure and overall storytelling that it might as well be a straightforward work of fiction. Along with co-writers Kim Caramele and Bill Parker, Goldenberg simplifies Wolfe Herd’s journey to a point where building a multi-million-dollar company from virtually the ground up comes off as the easiest thing in the world. Again, that’s easy enough to accept in a time-constrained film like this – after all, who wants to see a movie of someone going over all the paperwork or doing basic admin tasks? – but Swiped doesn’t add anything interesting to the mix that gives Whitney or her story real weight, to where you’re almost wishing for two hours of paperwork, because then it would at least be something different.

Instead, the film doubles down on endless biopic tropes that overcloud our engagement with the central subject herself. When we first meet Whitney Wolfe (the Herd part comes later, from a husband who’s barely even a character in this movie), we know very little about her other than what’s dumped on us in a quick exposition moment early on, and by the end there still feels as though there’s a lot more to be explored about this person, in addition to what kind of a person she is beyond her achievements. Through no fault of Lily James, who is at least trying to add depth to the rather thin material she’s been given, the character is never fascinating enough to warrant so much focus, because the script streamlines so much of what had to have been a pretty harrowing experience dealing with toxic male behaviour that, ironically, she comes off as weak in such moments. It doesn’t really work as a biopic, because not only is it sticking to a copy-and-paste formula, but it fails to convey why this particular person was so groundbreaking in her field, as well as how she was able to defy the odds and make a legitimate name for herself.

Referring back to The Social Network, and its much more intricate and complex study of what made Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg do the things he did in that movie’s context, Swiped clearly wants to do for the likes of Tinder and Bumble what that movie did for Facebook. However, it lacks the sophistication, the aesthetic (the lighting and staging of certain scenes make it feel like a direct-to-streaming sitcom) and, most importantly, the investment in these characters and their aspirations towards eventual glory, regardless of what they may do along the way. It’s a film that feels like it was made for the sole purpose of being a spiritual successor to Fincher’s film, not to mention capitalising on the prominent presence of both dating apps in our modern society, but try as it might Swiped is too flat and dull to even compete on that level.

And no, I’m not going to do the obvious “swipe left” joke to end this review (this doesn’t count, by the way).

SO, TO SUM UP…

Swiped is a thin and artificial attempt to tell the story of dating app pioneer Whitney Wolfe Herd, but despite Lily James’s efforts neither its central figure nor her story ever comes to life in a heavily streamlined narrative that relies on overly familiar tropes instead of, like the actual Wolfe Herd, making its own stamp on the formula.

Click here or check below to find where you can stream Swiped now, thanks to JustWatch!