In Review: The Social Network

The Gist

While being a film about the popular social networking site facebook, this movie is not your date / sheeple film that makes you feel cheated after seeing. The film flaunts excellent direction, witty script, perfect editing, and well-executed screenplay. The movie feels very mature, convincing, stylish, and full of content. The only missing ingredient is a character to sympathize with as in this film, you would hate the protagonist.

The good

• Excellent direction
• Casting and acting is also top-notch, coupled with a great script
• Well-written screenplay

The bad

• May appear too believable and vilifies facebook and Zuckerberg (not that it's a bad thing)
• Full of dialogs

The Other Face of Facebook

Based on the book Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, The Social Network details how Facebook started way back in 2003. If you are in IT or have been following Facebook's story, you would know that many IT people have shied away from Facebook mainly because most of them, us, thinks Zuckerberg is evil and is out to scam us of our privacy.

You must also know that if you are going to watch this movie, you must put aside your disdain for Zuckerberg as the movie will give you that. Yes, you will end up hating him for being a traitor and a thief. So who's the lucky guy who played Zuckerberg? It's Jesse Eisenberg, the guy from Zombieland. I actually mistake him quite often for Michael Cera (see below). Other than Cera, Le Beouf was apparently rumored to play the part.

So yes, you would end up hating Eisenberg for messing up Eduardo Saverin (his bestfriend, and former Facebook CFO--played by Andrew Garfield) and the Winklevoss twins (fondly referred to as the Winklevi, skillfully played by just 1 person, Armie Hammer).

What's amazing about the film other than how fleshed out and real these characters are is its way of narration--jumping back from one settlement table to another then to memory lane then to settlement table again. The script helps keep you entertained as that's all the movie is about, talk and talk. It would have been fun if we actually got to see the Winklevi chase Zuckerberg like they said in one of their testimonies.

The bad thing is, this is based on a book of a disputed nature. It may have overdramatized everything. I'm pretty sure Saverin wasn't out in the rain--dripping wet--when he went to Palo Alto. And the broken chimney, that might not even have happened. Of course, the dialogs, beautiful as they are, we must remind ourselves, is a product of Hollywood training--people can be witty and funny, but not all the time--which makes it all the more painful to watch for the subjects of the film. I'm pretty sure Zuckerberg winced everytime Eisenberg says something so obscenely insensitive.

Put yourself in those shoes. I wouldn't mind. He's a billionaire.

I give it a 4/5. Passed and Recommended.