COLUMN: Easy to click “Like” on ‘The Social Network’
“The Social Network” was a great movie to watch. It tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg), the developer of the internet sensation that is Facebook. It keeps movie-goers entertained throughout and tells a great story.
I first have to admit that when I first heard about this movie I was a bit skeptical. I thought it would be a lame movie about how amazing Facebook is. I was definitely wrong. As I looked into it more I realized how much potential it had. It was based on the non-fiction novel, The “Accidental Billionares,” written by Ben Mezrich: The same guy who wrote one of my favorite books, “Bringing Down the House,” which is the novel the movie “21” was based on.
Also, the screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the great NBC television show, “The West Wing.” Not to mention the director, David Fincher. Fincher directed “Se7en,” “Panic Room”, ” Zodiac,” and one of my favorite movies ever: “Fight Club.”
I was very excited to see how this movie making team of Sorkin and Fincher would do. I was expecting something great, and I was definitely not disappointed.
The film opens in a Boston bar where Harvard undergraduate Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend Erica Albright. He is crushed, and in a drunken fury he goes home and hacks into Harvard’s online sites to create a co-ed rating site. The site gets 22,000 hits on the first night. Because he wrote about the entire thing on his blog, he is caught and given six months academic probation.
This attracts the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron. The “Winklevi”, as Zuckerberg later calls them want him to help them program a dating website that would be exclusive to Harvard students. Zuckerberg instead decides to make a similar website on his own with funding from his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). They call it, “thefacebook.” Little does he know that he would later be facing law suits from each of these two parties.
As thefacebook.com grows in popularity, so do Mark and Eduardo. Eduardo looks to make some money from advertisers, much to the disapproval of Mark. While looking for potential advertisers, the two meet with the creator of Napster, Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake). While Eduardo doesn’t approve of Sean and his rockstar antics, Mark loves everything about him, and in a way begins to idolize him. He takes Sean’s advice and changes the website from thefacebook to just facebook.com.
Eventually Sean joins the Facebook team and helps them to become very successful. He also spices things up a bit with his drugs and partying antics. The tension continues to grow between Sean and Eduardo, and eventually ends with Eduardo being dumped from the company on the day Facebook got to one million members.
“The Social Network” was a huge success. Sorkin provided some great dialogue that Fincher ran with beautifully. Many of the scenes reminded me much of the classic dialogue based scenes of “Fight Club,” with quick and clever delivery that Timberlake and Eisenberg had down to a tee. Their time together on screen were great.
Sorkin also made this tale into somewhat of a thriller. The quick scene changes and rapid dialogue kept the movie moving at a fast and intense pace. It kept the audience on edge.
Eisenberg was also a highlight of this film. His depiction of the youngest billionaire alive was fantastic. He nailed the arrogant “speak your mind” attitude of a Harvard student who is an amazing programmer and knows it. I think he should no longer be compared to his look-alike Micheal Cera. He showed that he has potential to be a very successful actor and make a name for himself.
The acting of both Garfield and Timberlake were great too. I was particularly worried about Timberlake, but his first appearance on the screen quickly made all my fears vanish. He did a fantastic job of playing the cool and charming Hollywood know-it-all.
Overall this film was outstanding. It lived up to every expectation I had for it and exceeded others. I have to give it an A+.
– jace.smellie@aggiemail.usu.edu