Finally Getting Around to The Social Network

Yeah it's the facebook movie. It will always be the facebook movie, and if you don't like that then I can't help you. I can tell you why I enjoyed the movie though.

To start off this movie is based on a true story. That is to say it's based on one side of a true story. Going even further it was based on a book based on an interview with the jilted co-founder of facebook, and then written for the screen by Aaron Sorkin. A man who signed up for facebook a hot minute before adapting the book for the movie. So the story is a filter of a filter of one side of the truth. It's also a lot more interesting than the truth could have possibly been. And that's why it's a good movie. You want the complete truth? Watch a facebook documentary. Anyway let's roll.

What I liked: From the start you can tell it's going to be a fun watch if nothing else. Zombieland's Jesse Eisenberg is speaking a mile a minute (Speaking of which any Zombieland sequel will be expensive as 3 out of the 4 leads have been nominated for oscars, but I digress) and his poor girlfriend is trying to stay with his train of thought. Really Eisenberg was great in this and really did deserve the nomination for best actor, that was the biggest surprise for me, and it wasn't so much he deserved it for how he said his lines (really fast) it was when he didn't speak and was reacting to how he had lost his friend that really impressed me. He'll get an oscar, it just might take a bit longer. This was the perfect storm of talent to be involved in a movie, David Fincher has long been a favorite director of mine, Aaron Sorkin was responsible for the West Wing's snappy dialogue (and I previously said he wrote the screenplay, keep up!), Trent Reznor NIN's frontman scored the film, and the cast were all great, and are all going on to bigger and better things.

I didn't like knowing that there was a blatantly one sided story being told, and it was a smear campaign on Zuckerberg. This guy isn't likable as it is in real life what with his views on privacy, but shoehorning his life to fit the story was a bit cruel. It works as a movie and sometimes that's all that matters. In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the movie ended with a violent shootout, while in real life that never happened at all. Although at this point I think it's a bit insulting to the internet generation where information is at our fingertips constantly to put a story out there with the main crux of the story to be completely falsified. It belittles the story and the movie and the emotional resonance when (well I suppose if) you look up the real story after the movie. It's a good piece of fiction about an event that actually happened.

Why it didn't win the Oscar: The oscar voters are pretty old all things considered. Inspiring a nation to defeat the Nazis beats over the story of a little prick founding a successful internet company. Maybe it has something to do with another Oscar nominated movie as well: "I think positive emotion triumphs over negative emotion every time." -Inception. The King's Speech was inspiring, and that's kind of what a country in a depression needs at a time like this.

Anything else? I guess my final thoughts on the matter is don't rent this thinking that this is a true story, but don't be stopped from renting this because it's "the facebook movie."