Status: "Like" this movie
Nearly everyone laughed at the idea of making a movie about Facebook. As if people are running out of ideas to tell a story and come up with something ridiculous like a movie about the board games Battleships and Monopoly or about a computer simulations game, The Sims. We all thought it was going to be something wacky involving Facebook when in fact, we were all wrong. Helmed by David Fincher and written (beautifully) by Aaron Sorkin (not to mention composed by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails), we later found out it was about the creation of Facebook, that extremely addictive digital time-waster that has gotten nearly everyone in the entire planet hooked into. And with this combination of talents, who knew that a movie about Facebook would be so interesting, compelling and riveting, if not a little bit exaggerated.
The Social Network (aka Getting Screwed: The True Story) begins with a breakup between young Mark Zuckerberg, soon-to-be founder of Facebook (Jesse Eisenberg) and his ex. Fueled with rage and alcohol, Mark creates a web page, along with best friend Eduardo (the new Spiderman, Andrew Garfield) that allows guys to choose between various female Harvard students in terms of hotness and thus crashing the entire Harvard’s network. This grabs the attention of high-class Harvard students, the Winklevoss twins (played by just one guy, Armie Hammer) in proposing to Mark in programming their website. Although Mark closes himself off from the twins to create his own social network venture which would become “Facebook” and thus follows the backstabbing, the screwing-overs and the courtroom dramas for this one single idea.
This is the one tiny problem I had with the film and it made the film just a shy away from being an extremely great film for me. When it comes to adapting a true event into a feature film, there is always a chance where the story will be more exaggerated, elaborate, operatic and dramatic ala A Beautiful Mind and Shine. And it’s no big deal because you have to make the story very interesting and exciting for the audience. You can’t watch a boring film, I suppose. But with all the drama the film produced throughout, to me it just lost its impact towards the end and you can realize that there was no sense of peril, risk or endangerment. That it all works out in the end, which makes all the drama the film had not pointless, but an insy winsy tiny bit. That said, it all just kinda summed by just one quote, making me realized how romanticized the film really is. Said by the female lawyer in Mark’s defence, “To you, it’s just a speeding ticket.”
Not to say the film is bad, in fact it is still amazing. What I highly praised about this film are the performances by the actors and the always sharp-witty writing of Aaron Sorkin. His writing is always that fun and sharp especially in his last project, Charlie Wilson’s War and his writings are greatly delivered by the performances of the actors especially Jesse Eisenberg as the complete assh*le you can’t help but adore. Jesse just steals the show with his nose-raising superiority ego and his ability to give such great comebacks with complete ownage. Andrew Garfield really hold it together and you really do feel sympathetic for him as the only good friend of Mark, as he is doing everything for him and to make his business work only to have him screwed. Justin Timberlake is now placing himself among the rare list of great music-artists turned great actors as he proved himself to just wow us over and over.
For a movie with a not-so-interesting subject like Facebook, this is kind of a must-see. There are great performances from the cast especially Jesse and Justin and the writing will keep you hanging for every great bits, not to mention it is also so damn funny. Though you'll find that the film is made something that is small very much exaggerated, you will be thankful that the great performances, the writing, the camera direction and the music came into play otherwise it would have such a hacked attempt. Add this to your Facebook's friends.
4 out of 5 stars
