The Social Network

           Partly quoting a friend of mine, if you had told someone two years ago that a film about the founding of Facebook would be both financially and critically successful, odds are they would have put you in a straight jacket and locked you in a soft room, (Korsgaard, I believe you know which friend I'm quoting).  Having seemed this film recently and how I've been reviewing Best Picture Nominees over the past few days, I decided why not keep the flow going and give my thoughts on it.  This is The Illusive One's Review of The Social Network.

            The story of the film is set as a frame narrative as Eduardo Saverin, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra sue Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, for different reasons and flashes back to Zuckerberg's days in Harvard as he first built the website and examines his relationships with Eduardo and Napster founder Sean Parker.  The film stars name as Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Eduardo, Justin Timberlake as Parker, and was directed by David Fincher.  After its release, it would go on to win 3 Golden Globes, was nominated for two more, win three Oscars and was nominated for five more.  But did it deserve all the praise it received?  Well, here are my thoughts.

            On the positive side, it was a good story of the rise of a billionaire.  Eisenberg was perfect as Zuckerberg as were Garfield as Eduardo and Timberlake as Parker.  It showed Zuckerberg as being more of a cutthroat businessman then the happy-go-lucky nerd billionaire most people view him as and I felt that this was a welcome change.  While I was expecting more humor out of a film with Eisenberg in it, there were some moments I thought were hilarious, mainly because I could actually see people getting into those kinds of situations.  Finally, I thought it was very interesting to see just how Facebook got started and how it evolved from being a project of an undergrad to the biggest social network in history.

            On the negative side, they portrayed Zuckerberg to be a complete fucking asshole.  As I said above, it was nice to see him in another light but they made him look like a complete dick.  Was he actually like this?  I don't know.  I’ve never met the man but it's pissed a lot of Zuckerberg fans off.  It also inaccurately portrays the early days of Facebook and made its founding seem a lot more fun than it actually was, (this according to the people involved who stated they were constantly working most of the time).  The point of view was also kind of bias as it's mostly through the people who are suing Zuckerberg.  It was also a little annoying the way Eisenberg would speak a hundred words a minute, as if that was suppose to make him sound smart, (it did but I still felt it was unnecessary).  The final negative has to do with the plot itself.  As this film that deals with computers and isn't some kind of over the top action movie, it tended to be a bit boring at times and only the dramatic story keeps it alive.

              In the end, if you ignore the inaccuracies, you have a great film about the rise of the world’s youngest billionaire.  It was well acted, had a great, if a bit boring, storyline and truly was entertaining.  If you’re an obsessed Zuckerberg fan who can't keep an open mind, I'd recommend skipping this one.  If not, then absolutely check this one out because it's a great one.

All Around

9/10