Tech Olive

Warning: this movie review may or may not contain spoilers.

Okay, so we all know Facebook is a pretty big deal. There’s really no denying it. It’s literally taking over our computer screens and even bits of our lives. It has the power to retain people from getting work done and even gets people fired from their jobs (Of course, that’s not really Facebook’s fault). Even the creation story of Facebook is something to admire: A regular college student (smart, mind you) develops a website from his dorm room and is all of a sudden the youngest billionaire in the world. It’s practically a no-brainer that a blockbuster movie was made that’s based on the creation of one of the largest web presences. However, is it any good? Is it worth the $9 you’ll spend (that’s what I spent) to see it in theaters? Or should you just wait until the DVD release? Follow the break!

The Social Network follows Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) back in 2003 when he comes up with the idea to put the social experience online in a way that was never thought of. Thanks to his three roommates, including best friend Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg created essentially the first draft of Facebook called “The Facebook.” However, Zuckerberg’s creation also produces multiple legal battles and a broken relationship with his best friend.

The film really starts out with a bang, with Zuckerberg talking to his girlfriend at a bar which leads to an argument and then to a break up (probably one of the best break-up scenes I’ve ever seen). After that, the rest of the movie relies on flashbacks between the two legal depositions and what actually happened in the dorm-room days. You’d think that it would be hard to follow three different scenarios switching between one another, but it’s actually very well done and all three scenarios follow the same story at the same pace, so it’s pretty easy to keep up.

Jesse Eisenberg was quite phenomenal in this film. There were plenty of lines that afterward made you say, “hell yeah.” He portrays Zuckerberg as an evil genius of sorts, fortifying the belief that it takes a lot of pissing people off to make it to the top.

Below: In my opinion, one of the best scene in the entire movie:

I should also mention Justin Timberlake, who played Sean Parker, founder of Napster. Later in the film, he and Zuckerberg form a partnership that turns Facebook into the giant that it is today. Timberlake is another good act in the film, mostly because he managed to jump out of his usual celebrity self and into the role of Sean Parker.

I have to give a shout out to director David Fincher and Trent Reznor (who scored the music in the film). There’s a scene where Zuckerberg and Parker are in a dance club in San Francisco talking business (an important scene in the film). Reznor’s score plays while the two converse, but the music is so terribly loud that you can barely hear them talk. Fincher wanted the scene to be as loud as possible, but still be able to understand the dialogue. He wanted the viewers to feel like they were right there in the dance club with them. Great cinematography right there.

The only thing that I was longing for in the film was the truth. What actually happened in real life and what was just movie fluff? Mark Zuckerberg himself stated that the creation of Facebook didn’t involve parties, drugs, or sex, but simply just a ton of late nights of coding in his dorm room. Then again, the film only showed Zuckerberg at a party once out of several party scenes in the movie. I think this is one of those situations where you get the basics about the beginnings of Facebook and the rest is just plain entertainment and enjoyment, whether or not you believe it’s true.

So, is this a film worthy to spend way too much money on to see in the theaters? Yes. In fact, I honestly would take a trip to the theaters multiple times to see this move over again.

Watch the official trailer below:

Image Credit: Merrick Morton – © 2010 Columbia Tristar Marketing Group, Inc.