Review for 'The Social Network'

Bloggers Note: I know in the post 'Social Network: My Thoughts' I noted that I would not review the movie however after writting up those notes for my universities newspaper; I thought I would post it here as well.

One of the biggest problems with David Fincher’s new flick ‘The Social Network’ is everyone going to see it is calling it ‘The Facebook Movie’. What people don’t actually realise is that it isn’t about someone carelessly clicking ‘Like’ on their friends latest Facebook comment, but rather about the legal battles Mark Zuckerberg went through in the past decade to get Facebook to where it is.

The movie begins with soon to be billionaire Mark Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) on a date with his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), with enough snappy dialog that the audience begins to establish what kind of a character Mark really is. He’s ingenious, fast and also a bit of an ass as his girlfriend soon dumps him, sending Mark off on a drunken rage to hack all the Harvard Universities ‘Facebook’ pages and make a sexist site called Facemash.com for people to rate their peers. After being suspended by his university, Mark is approached by the Winklevoss brothers, who ask Mark to create a site for them called Harvard Connections. However, Mark has an idea for his own site, a site which everyone with a Harvard email account can access and make a profile, and with best friend Eduardo Saverin backing him, Mark becomes unstoppable. It is this site which later becomes the Facebook we all know and use today. From just the opening scenes we understand the irony which is throughout the film, and that irony is how possibly one of the most anti-social people created the most social network in the world.

With the West Wing’s script writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher behind it, ‘The Social Network’ ends up being a contest of wit between writer and director. It is so refreshing have a director who can use CGI (in the case of the Winklevoss brothers both being actor Armie Hammer) as a tool and not a gimmick, and a writer whose pacing is so fast it doesn’t wait for the dim-witted to keep up.

The acting in it is excellent, Jessie Eisenberg has established himself before and with this movie catalogue behind him, he appears to completely embody Mark Zuckerberg as a character. As well as Jessie, up-and-comer British born Andrew Garfield has really grown from ‘The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus’ (2009) and only good things can come from the new Spiderman. Then there is Justin Timberlake (whose track record of movies haven’t been great until now) as the Napster inventor Sean Parker who becomes Mark’s mentor, whilst attempting to divide long time friendship with co-creator Eduardo Saverin. But even the minor characters grab the audience whilst making them laugh or emotional. Although it is too early for Oscar nods, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these three is nominated and it would be rightly so.

With the critical acclaim and its second week in the US Box Office chart this movie is really a testament to the fact that people would prefer to see a movie which is clever, funny and insightful. The quick dialog and snappy characters make the lengthy film time go flashing by. We are the Facebook generation, and this movie captures it’s creation in a captivatingly way.

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