By: Clark Kent of DontLoseYourDayJob.com
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The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here. David Fincher’s The Social Network is out today [Oct. 1] in theaters. With Facebook at 500 million friends plus, will this be a movie that you shell out real money to see? Let’s discuss.
GOOD: Based on Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Finch appropriates the Digital Age to weave an intricate tale of intrigue, dramatics, and the dynamics of a changing culture in The Social Network.
Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland) wonderfully portrays the factitional (fact/fiction) brainiac behind Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. He boldly ventures into the role giving the character a squirmy unlikeability and unapologetic intelligence. Eisenberg infuses the Zuckerberg character with a range of emotions from gall, anger and pain, opportunism, and a longing for a real connection that seemingly constantly eludes him in the midst of all his success, trials, and tribulations.
If Eisenberg is the brains of the outfit, then co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, Never Let Me Go) is the heart and conscience of the film. With Justin Timberlake as the deceptively charming Napster founder Shawn Fanning, The Social Network is a 21st Century The Catcher In The Rye, as audiences will be taken on a ride full of brilliance, hubris, betrayal, lust, longing, money, and the inevitable legal drama.
BAD: Most teen films with this heavy dosage of subject material are normally rated R for mature audiences. In The Social Network’s case, the PG-13 rating hampers the film immensely! After seeing Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) inspired after a lonely drunken night, one would expect the film to not water itself down. Instead the flick overdubs profane language, maneuvers stealthily around the issues of underage sex, drug use, and copious amounts of underage drinking — which fills the film with hints of debauchery-laden material — but never dives into the seedy muck.
There’s an interesting subplot that involves the two founders of the “Me” Generation’s greatest creations, and it’s not given the proper space to develop because there’s little breathing room to do so. In the end, it renders certain significant parts of the movie much hollower than one would expect at times…
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