"The Social Network" is a movie about the designers of The Facebook. I will put aside my own feelings about Faccia-Libre. I will not preach about how Facebook is just another symptom of our fragmented society. I want to review the movie.
At the onset, Jesse Eisenberg (Juno) and Justin Timberlake (N-Sync) do not inspire thoughts of good drama in my mind. However, both these young men, when given a good script, a good story and good direction stepped up to plate and hit one out of the park. The movie has three flawed protagonists, two are Harvard students and one is a cyber-hustler. The antagonist is the higher education cyber-establishment.
Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg, the socially inept ADDHD computer genius. Andrew Garfield plays Eduardo Saverin his business-major partner whose' practicality and lack of vision almost killed the concept. Timberlake plays Sean Parker, the cyber genius of Napster who sees the potential of Facebook. Parker realized that Facebook had to remain cool to appeal to the youth and also that the lack of privacy was the key to exponential growth. They had no idea that Grandma would be tagging people and playing Farmville on the site.
The movie works because it simply told the story. I couldn't believe how much I liked this movie. Perhaps I liked it because it was about a small group of people caught up in a unique moment in history. O.K. they didn't invent penicillin, they invented a self indulgent cesspool of sophistry, but still they had initiative. I give the movie four and a half stars.
It is a true American Tale.
1 comment:
Great review, Babba. We loved the film. Aaron Sorkin (who wrote the screenplay) is always brilliant, but can nonetheless hut some off-notes. I think this movie is Sorkin at his best. Skillful storytelling. Excellent, witty dialogue.
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