DVD Review: The Social Network

I finally had the chance to finally catch the movie version of the story of Facebook last night. If you’re a fan of Facebook, it might be of interest of you.

If you never used Facebook before, move along.

It starts out with Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, and his girlfriend and the time, talking in a bar. But it wasn’t any normal conversation. It was the fast paced, rapid reply type of conversation that no one ever has except addicts in their cocaine addled brain. It almost made me want to stop the disc then and there and take an axe to it if I didn’t have to return it to the library.

Did I mention that the movie was written by Aaron Sorkin? Let’s see:

“It was the fast paced, rapid reply type of conversation that no one ever has except addicts in their cocaine addled brain”.

So it was implied.

It’s a Hollywood version about the origin of Facebook so take that with a grain of salt. If there is a scene that needed to be embellished to show conflict and drama instead of what really happened, 99 times out of a 100, Hollywood will go with the embellishment. Having the movie sacrifice the truth in order to create drama.

Which is what happened here, I think. Most movies need a villain of some kind, no matter how abstract. Zuckerberg happened to be it this time. Instead of a big bad like Darth Vader, he's more of a introverted nerd obsessed with making the best damn social network online today, relationships be damned. And it came back to bite him in the form of a few lawsuits.

The movie itself was beautifully shot, using Johns Hopkins backdrop as a double for Harvard for the first part of the film. Movie lots and a few other select locations where used for the rest.

One thing this movie did affirm for me. Is that Justin Timberlake is the epitome of metrosexuality.

What most people didn’t realize until after the fact is that this movie was a special effects movie without realizing it was a special effects movie. Two actors played the Winklevoss Twins. But you only see one of them. The main actor’s face was digitally superimposed over the other actor’s face. I don’t think most people realized it unless they tried to catch the guy's name in the credits. Depending on which DVD or BluRay disc you have, it's shown how they digitally mapped one face over the other.

The soundtrack is very non-traditional. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails helped to create much of it. The high point was the track being played during the sculling regatta of “In the Hall of the Mountain King”.

The fast pitched dialog did get on my nerves at times. But that is Sorkin's gimmick. Because he hears it in his head, everyone speaks in a fast, faster retort fashion.

If you want to watch the movie expecting to be told the real story about how Facebook came about, give it a pass. If you’re looking for something about how people come to power, money and influence and how they can stab others in the back, then this might be the movie for you.