Entertaining Flick, A Little Over-hyped

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 2010)

The critics are falling all over themselves praising this film, predicting a armload of Oscars for the principals come March, and that could very well happen, but The Social Network doesn't seem like any kind of modern-day classic to me.
What strikes one while watching it is the skillful way Sorkin, Fincher, and the actors can hold your interest for 2 hours with a story about a socially-awkward computer wiz's rise to the top and the pesky lawsuits he had to endure, which seem real important during the film, but eventually result in settlements.
Apparently Fincher can make any subject matter interesting, and Sorkin's rapid-fire script had the audience I watched with hanging on every word. You had to pay attention. If you were distracted for 5 seconds, you might miss 4 lines of dialogue. And while all of it was clever, there were no great truths coming from the actor's mouths. There wasn't much of a theme to latch on to here, other than the irony of a friendless geek creating the biggest social phenomenon on the web. As far as I could tell, everyone just wanted to get paid. Except Justin Timberlake's character who wanted to get laid and high as well. He was great, by the way.
Jesse Eisenberg was also great (again) evolving from his usual intelligent, self-conscious, sensitive guy to an intelligent, self-conscious, insensitive guy. Not much of a leap that Eisenberg manages easily. I didn't hate his character at the end as much as everyone else seems to. Best bud Andrew Garfield and rich guy(s) Armie Hammer were good too.
I guess the lack of real conflict or suspense is the cause for the slight flatness I felt at the end. I knew Zuckerberg was going to come out filthy rich and in the absence of any personal epiphany from him, the fate of his former best bud just wasn't enough to get me emotionally involved. (Don't worry, he got paid -- along with everyone else.)