Smooth, smart yet shallow

Rating: Null/10 (4 November 2011)

This movie deserved the accolades thrown on it. With a good script (penned by Aaron Sorkin, who breaks out of the habits that killed his previous show), nice pacing, smart acting and a few clever tricks, it tells the story of Facebook in convincing fashion. Proceedings are kept lean and smart: there are not too many characters and they are kept relatively uncomplicated. In fact, that might be the main criticism: for something dressed as a factual interpretation of events, it's all rather shallow. The main character has the most depth, but the rest more or less tumble into the situations they were designed for. In short, it lines up a lot of caricatures of people and them shoots them down in appropriate fashion. Near the end a character makes a comment that counters one of the opening lines in the movie: it's intentional and works if you don't think too much about it. But under close scrutiny it falls apart.
That is the trick to this move: don't think too hard and it appears to be intelligent. But dig too deep and the whole saga seems a tad daft. Much like Facebook!