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Friday, October 1, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW 
The Social Network
A Nerd World Filled With Faces, Possibility And Betrayal


Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in "The Social Network".  Sony Pictures

by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW
Friday, October 1, 2010

David Fincher's "The Social Network" is a crackling, highly entertaining account of at least two lawsuits against Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, and it runs at top gear for every moment of its two hours.  Its Hawksian rapid-fire dialogue and break-neck edits early on hurl audiences into the world of lickety-split quick thinker and Harvard computer programmer Zuckerberg, played adeptly and with dry, quirky charm by Jesse Eisenberg ("Adventureland"). 

The film hurtles back and forth between flashbacks from 2003 and 2004 to the present day in four U.S. cities: San Francisco, Cambridge, Palo Alto and New York.


Mr. Fincher creates an Internet world on the big screen and sets it alight with energy, electricity and enervating dialogue, brilliantly written by Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing"). 

Meticulously detailed, fast-paced and engaging, audiences need not know much about the lawsuits against Zuckerberg.  He was sued for appropriation of an idea for a student network website that was to have been run out of Harvard University by three of his cohorts, including twin brothers, one of whom resembles Fincher's Tyler Durden-Brad Pitt of "Fight Club", the other a brawnier edition of England's Prince William. 

Other than the nerd-vs.-jock theme that runs through the veins of this production, "The Social Network" avoids bursts of muscularity or fisticuffs, but does its women characters (with one or two exceptions) an overall disservice.

Mr. Fincher, who previously took us to worlds filled with a murky, golden brown hue, keeps that visual theme here and throws glass and transparency on the tops and outer edges.  The cyberspace chessboard is populated with Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, "Boy A"), Facebook's CFO, and Sean Parker, founder of Napster.  Parker is played by Justin Timberlake, who has grown into acting quite well, honing and shaping his craft here as a hip, self-centered seducer of the eager, opportunistic but socially un-savvy Zuckerberg, whose hunger to grow Facebook into a juggernaut of an empire puts him at odds with some of his closest allies.

In an age where newspaper journalism and its accompanying layoffs have reached their nadir, "The Front Page" and "His Girl Friday" of Howard Hawks' day becomes the electronic billboard of instant comment and reportage in "The Social Network", a Hawks-type film with a Fincher touch for a new generation. 

In today's comparative parlance it's a more flavorful, though less caricatured film than this summer's "Middle Men", an account on the real-life entrepreneurs behind the birth of the online porn industry.  Even so, "The Social Network" is less about Facebook than it is about a competition for the marketplace of ideas and the satellites of creators who vie to rule the world with those ideas.  That those creators are 23 or 25 may be troubling to their parents or seasoned authority figures, as Mr. Fincher's film illustrates.  We see nobodies tapping into the cult of celebrity with laser focus, and becoming instant some bodies, stealing a march on reality television, while running circles around the elder generation.

With: Denise Grayson, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Rashida Jones, Armie Hammer.

"The Social Network" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language.  The film's running time is one hour and 52 minutes.

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