Why?

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2010)

The film itself is excellently filmed and acted but I wonder why did they have to choose this particular story. For all I know,

not only was the idea (Facebook) not brilliant, but the real surprise is why no one came up with something similar to it back in the mid-90s when the internet just started.

plus, the software itself posed no challenge at all from the algorithmic or programming point of view. In this respect, the story behind Google or Napster would have been even more interesting.

real characters are rewritten in ways which I'm sure only retain a portion of the truth, and a not-so-subtle commentary on social mobility and glass ceilings is made which in fact is not pertinent at all here.

If Fincher wanted to make a film about stupidity and its different forms, and about the mediocrity and the moral desert his society lives in, he succeeded. If he wanted to make a movie about truly brilliant people doing truly innovative things, however, he should have chosen other base material. Fincher should be aware of how his films are understood by mainstream critics and audiences, and if this film was meant to be ironic, then the irony is too thin to be understood by most people, let alone make a point; you just have to read the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic to realize this.