The Social Network

The Social Network

 

I watched The Social Network two years ago when it came out in theatres; so when I saw its name on the list of movies premiered in the Film Festival, the choice was obvious. Of course I watched it again because I remembered that I had walked out of the theatre thinking, “what a great movie!” What could be a more perfect than a college kid writing a review about a movie about other college kids? The Social Network is set on the Harvard University campus as a student there by the name of Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) creates the social networking site known as Facebook; another favorite topic of mine. The plot is full of drama; and the directors make that clear by setting the entire film as a flashback since it begins with several people suing Zuckerberg while the rest of the storyline explains how it got to that point. One of the people suing him is Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield; aka Spiderman). Eduardo starts out as Zuckerberg’s best friend from Harvard, the co-founder of Facebook, as well as the suave, popular counterpart to Zuckerberg’s socially awkward, pompous persona. As the plot twists and turns, Zuckerberg becomes badly influenced by a man named Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), a self proclaimed entrepreneur and business failure, who managed to squirm his way to a cut in Facebook. The duo ends up scamming Eduardo out of his fair share of Facebook, inevitably ending up in lawsuit. The other couple suing Zuckerberg in the movie is the twins, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (played by Armie Hammer and Josh Pence). They’re accusing Zuckerberg of stealing their idea of creating a social networking site after they went to Zuckerberg in the beginning of the film in attempt to get him to build one for them; since he is in fact the genius that he is. “Technically” Zuckerberg didn’t steal their idea, but in reality, he did. The writers of The Social Network did a great job in confusing the viewers on who to root for. Throughout the entire film, I felt annoyed that I couldn’t pity the poor, dorky main character as I do in other films; mostly due to the fact that Zuckerberg was portrayed as a pompous know-it-all who was rude to almost everybody that spoke to him. I give props to Jesse Eisenberg for his acting in this film because there is no way a real person could be that socially awkward. On the other hand, I couldn’t possibly root for the Winklevoss twins because 1) they’re portrayed as the antagonists, and 2) their last names are just pretentious. Therefore, I became the #1 Eduardo fan. All in all, the actors were great, the conflicts were great; and I think I loved The Social Network the most because it put an intriguing storyline behind one of my most favorite websites/severe addiction of Facebook.