EARLY REVIEW: The Social Network

Last night there was a random and very small advanced screening for The Social Network. Since this movie does not come out until October 1st, I will not give a full review. I’ll leave that for Chris or Joe, but I will give some teasing early thoughts.

--Yes, this is “The Facebook Movie” and that should excite, not make people scoff. It may be a time-waster site but it’s now the biggest website on the Internet. I just read another report of it getting more hits than Google. If you haven’t heard the story of how this site came to be, you’re going to be really impressed/shocked/horrified/amused.

--In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg created The Facebook while enrolled as a student in Harvard University. It was a way of bring the social scene of college online with all of its exclusivity, fun, and validation. The real question is how much of the website was Mark's idea. The tagline of the film is "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies." One of the bitter ironies of this film is counting how many friends Mark Zuckerberg has left after the many scandals and lawsuits.

--Aaron Sorkin is back. I adore the TV shows Sports Night and (the first four seasons of) The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin has a cool wit with his fast talking characters. Hiring him as the screenwriter for this adaptation was genius. This is one of the rare examples when the movie is better than the book. The dialog is amazing and he uses unconventional plotting techniques to tell the story. The suspense doesn’t come from whether or not Facebook is going to explode, but how it gets to that point.

--Director David Fincher is only as a good as his script in my mind. I don’t always connect to his films, but this was a blast. When you combine Fincher and Sorkin they make characters rambling about coding completely dynamic.

--This movie is not nice towards Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, but it is not completely villainizing him. This is definitely a ballsy movie since Facebook is still rising with popularity. This movie isn’t going to make them fall, but it will get people to talk.

--Jesse Eisenberg is brilliant as Zuckerberg. His arrogance and apathy can dominate a scene but when he stops talking he can disappear in the frame. Since he doesn’t break down crying, I sadly don’t think he will be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.

--Andrew Garfield (Red Riding – 1974, the next Spider-Man), Justin Timberlake, and Rooney Mara (the next Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) are all stellar. These are actors on the rise.

--See this movie. It’s one of my favorites of the year so far.

Theatrical Trailer