The Social Network reminded me how much I miss The West Wing. It's all Aaron Sorkin trademark dialog and it starts in the first scene with two people talking and keeping multiple threads dangling simultaneously. I was just shocked that they were sitting and not walking down a corridor.
As everyone knows at this point it's the story of the founding of Facebook based on a controversial book by Ben Mezrich called The Accidental Billionaires.
I liked the early scenes best. There's a great breakup in a bar, a number of good Harvard scenes and the story of Zuckerberg's prank site, facemash. The rest had some good moments and lines but all seemed a similar blur switching between 20 year-olds trying to talk like businessmen with characters coding in the background and parties with drunk women. All of this was interspersed with depositions from two lawsuits.
Jesse Eisenberg apparently did a good job as Zuckerberg, but he seemed like every other character I've seen him play, even with Sorkin dialog coming out of his mouth. The other actors were all fine but not particularly noteworthy. Their job was to deliver lines not really to build characters.
David Fincher directed. I didn't notice much of his trademark visual flare, but then that might be the mark of a very good job. I didn't realize that the twins in the film were mostly just one actor. Benjamin Button built up his digital skills well. The soundtrack (by Trent Reznor) did a great job pulling my forward in my seat and building up some adrenaline while watching people sit in a chair and type.
In the end, I think all the partying added to plot did more to make me disbelieve the story I saw than to make the story more exciting or dramatic. Then again, I realized that The Social Network wasn't the first film to show emacs on screen, it might have been the first to mention it by name. Noticing that probably removes me from the target demographic.
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