Out Come The Geeks

Rating: 6/10 (20 August 2013)

Who would have thought a feature film could have been made about a bunch of nerdy students creating a web-site? I suppose though in the time-honoured fashion of the likes of "The Paper Chase", "Cider House Rules" and "Good Will Hunting" there can be gold in campus drama,although the difference here of course is that this isn't fiction, being an account of how Mark Zuckerburg with a little help from his friends, got the concept of Facebook out of his head and onto the market, making billions in the process. You'd have thought, mind you, that was more than enough money for him to share, rather than allow himself to be embroiled in high-profile and no doubt expensive court-cases by some of the people he trod on and used to get to the top, but thin as it is, that's the premise for the movie.
Right from the start, director Fincher shows Zuckerburg in an unflattering light, a geeky, self-centred, pretentious student who expects everyone to bow down to his intellect, but after his then girlfriend dumps him, a petty act of revenge on her leads to his Eureka moment in setting up an online club appealing principally to the young set.
The film is highly watchable, due to the pacey direction and Aaron Sorkin's ear for needle-sharp dialogue, but some posters here are right when they say that this film probably wouldn't work as fiction at all and it's only our real-life interest in the background to one of the biggest business success stories of modern times which compels our attention. Certainly there are no likable main characters here, besides the venal Zuckerburg, his meal-ticket friend and partner Eduardo Saviano seems just too gullible to be true while Napster-king Sean Parker ruthlessly lords it over his adoring acolytes in repellent messianic rock-star style. I almost wished that Zuckerburg's girlfriend stayed in the film throughout (she turns up briefly again later) as she seemed by far the most credible and sympathetic character here. Seems to me she should have shared in the mega-wealth too, as she inadvertently inspired Zuckerburg in the first place!
The acting by the leads is very good, none better than Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerburg, plus there's an excellent modern soundtrack courtesy of Trent Raznor. On the debit side, there's some uncalled-for gratuitous sex and Justin Timberlake is too big a celebrity to play big-nobody Parker. On the whole I'd probably hit the "Like" button for this film, but consider it a bit overrated both by the Academy, where it received a Best Film Oscar nomination and probably the public at large including the community here.