This history of Facebook is exciting--for a awhile. Lots of filler here & great script, great acting.

Rating: 7/10 (26 September 2012)

The Social Network (2010)
The rise of Facebook is so sensational in terms of money and culture, a movie about it was inevitable, and it came early in the game. Appropriately. Everything is speeded up in this world, and who knows why turn might make Facebook the next AOL or Nokia.
And so it is quite the story. I don't think it's such a great movie in movie-making terms, however, and this flies in the face of a lot of critical acclaim. Beyond the main story line, there are lots of party and social scenes that are meant to display the changing lifestyles of the main characters (much of which is openly inaccurate). These are prolonged enough to lose their point, and after a few of them, they lose their initial interest, too. They are really meant to serve as interesting ways to have dialog about the stellar rise in members and money involved with Facebook.
Because of course there is no action in a movie like this. It's mostly dialog. It's about ideas and numbers and watching computer screens. We are led through the initial moments of inspiration, possible intellectual theft, and good luck at the beginning of Zuckerberg's rise. But there are only so many aspects to this rise that can hold interest for us. It is pinned together through a more recent scene in a well appointed briefing room, as a couple of the leading characters give testimony about who really started Facebook. Flashbacks fill up the rest of the film.
What to miss? The long and overly filmic rowing scenes (part of which were partly scale models, actually). What not to miss? The lead, deadpan performance by Jesse Eisenberg and the really moving performance that steals every scene he's in by Andrew Garfield. Justin Timberlake is good, too, and will be a separate draw for some. The twins turn out to not be twins--quite incredibly, a body double was the second twin and the face of the first actor was digitally inserted into the second one. Crazy stuff.
The writing is superb. Aaron Sorkin is key here, making some of the dialog really virtuosic (including the first scene, a dialog in a bar between Zuckerberg and his would be never will be girlfriend, which took 99 takes, all shot with the legendary digital Red camera). The filming, as such, is really good in a functional way, and with the experienced Jeff Cronenweth in charge (he did minor flicks like "Fight Club" and the American "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"). And Cronenweth is one of director's David Fincher's big reasons for success.
Fincher is a terrific director, and you might say he made the most of a story with little real substance. But I'm not sure that's true. I just saw "Moneyball" a second time last week and it holds up really well even though it generally lacks what you would call action, too, and was written in part by Aaron Sorkin as well. I think Moneyball, whatever its defects, is a better movie. Both movies are about contemporary society and the changing way we use computers, and the way people behind the scenes have made this true.
Facebook is a story we are all destined to be affected by, whether you learn of it through the movie or elsewhere. Many people are just totally gaga about the crazy amount of money involved, the movie clicks. The title of the book this was based on is perfect--The Accidental Billionaires. So true. For me, though, I'm like Zuckerberg himself. I just don't care about money, and so the main draw in scene after scene was missing. Judge for yourself.