Friday, October 1, 2010
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
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
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.
FOLLOW
SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPCORN REEL MOVIE
REVIEWS RSS FEED
