<!–Saxotech Paragraph Count: 16
–>
If you’re anything like me, checking Facebook has become as vital a daily activity as drinking fluids, using the bathroom and eating.
Friends and family are hooked up at all hours of the day, and the great thing is, we can all keep in touch in whatever way suits us. Some argue that it’s impersonal but that’s for a different column.
When I first heard all of the buzz surrounding “The Social Network,” I rolled my eyes. Seriously, did we need a movie about the creators of Facebook? Let’s be honest, when something like MySpace or Napster come along, it’s the greatest thing ever and when the next thing replaces it, it’s no longer all that cool.
Will we even care for a movie about Facebook a few years from now? Now we keep reading stories about the creators of Facebook coming out to say that so much of the film is fiction and never happened.
It’s a nonissue because “The Social Network” isn’t so much about Facebook as it is about human interaction. And it would be an excellent movie even if it was 100 percent fiction.
Maybe it’s David Fincher’s direction, Trent Reznor’s soundtrack or just the brilliant ensemble cast, but I didn’t really care that it was about the genesis of a computer program I use on a daily basis.
By all accounts, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is a genius in a business sense. The film starts out showing Mark (Jesse Eisenberg) in college, casually pushing away a potential girlfriend with his ramblings about life. She breaks up with him and he goes home and immediately trashes her on a Harvard blog site.
That leads him to hack into the system to collect the mug shots of every female in the registry at the school. He posts their photographs on a website and asks people to vote on who’s hotter. This supposedly is where he came up with the term “Facebook.”
Jump ahead a little bit and we meet the meathead twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. They have an idea for a social networking site that will cater to Harvard students, and they want Mark to jump in.
He decides that he has a better idea and begins constructing The Facebook. Initially, it’s just for Harvard students but it quickly spreads to other Ivy League schools.
The Winklevosses hear about Mark’s new venture and immediately start building a case for intellectual theft.
Mark and his business partner, Eduardo, work out a plan to expand the website to the West coast and that’s when former Napster co-founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) steps in. He’s a shrewd businessman who has ideas to make the company a corporation. Once Mark and Sean start mixing it up, Facebook begins to become the monster we know and love today.
I don’t care if it’s the real story of Facebook or not. It’s an excellent tale of a little fish making an enormous splash in the business world. It’s filmed in a way reminiscent of “Good Will Hunting” or even “Dead Poets Society.”
Nominated for eight Oscars and listed as the 165th best movie of all-time on imdb.com, “The Social Network” is as good as advertised.
Now I must go and check Facebook.
“The Social Network,” PG-13, sexual content, language. 2 hours.