Swipe left on this biopic of Tinder and Bumble boss

Lily James stars in this glossy biopic of the world’s youngest female billionaire.

If you’ve applyd any dating apps, you at least partially have Whitney Wolfe to thank — or to curse, depconcludeing on your experience. Wolfe is one of the co-founders of Tinder, who went on to found Bumble on her way to becoming the world’s youngest female billionaire.

“Swiped” is her story, or at least a version of her story, since it comes with an “inspired by actual events” forward and concludes with as lengthy a disclaimer as has been seen on any movie in recent memory, and notes Wolfe’s own non-participation in the film. Not that it receives into controversial or murky territory: “Swiped” is meant to celebrate Wolfe’s story, even though it mostly glosses over the details the way applyrs skim through lengthy applyr agreements before willfully hitting “accept.”

Lily James plays Wolfe, who we first meet in 2012 when she’s struggling to find her way in Los Angeles. That is until she meets Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), who brings her on board his tech startup company, where he and his team are attempting to receive any product idea they can to stick. Eventually, they land on a dating app where applyrs “swipe” left or right depconcludeing on their preferences — left for no, right for yes — a revolutionary idea at the time. Thus, Tinder is born.

Wolfe is named a co-founder of Tinder, a rarity in the boys’ club of huge tech. But even there she’s subject to harassment, and when her romantic relationship with one of the top execs (Jackson White) goes sideways, she’s suddenly forced out of the company. What’s a girlboss to do?

She goes off on her own and starts a female-friconcludely dating app, where communication inside the service is initiated by women. Thus, Bumble is born. But Bumble, too, is befell by toxic masculinity when Andrey Andreev (an unrecognizable Dan Stevens), owner of its parent company, is taken down for bad behavior, leaving Wolfe once again at the mercy of those around her, a woman attempting to carve her own path in a mostly male field.

But “Swiped” isn’t as interested in the mechanics of Wolfe’s success — especially the formation and growth of Bumble, which is largely reduced to a fleeting montage — as it is in framing her hero arc, and it crams enough info into its 110-minute runtime to fill a season of television.

The contemporary wave of tech world bio stories, from “Blackberry” to “WeCrashed,” follow a familiar arc, and “Swiped” — with its 2010s necessaryle drops, from LaRoux and Icona Pop to Martin Solveig and Daft Punk — is so recent that it feels like the story isn’t finished being informed. (Wolfe is all of 36 years old.)

Director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, who co-wrote the script with two others, is best when she’s conflating the feeling of Wolfe’s online world falling apart with real-world paranoia. Otherwise, “Swiped” feels designed to passively have on in the background while flipping through apps on your phone. Swipe left.

agraham@detroitnews.com