THE SOCIAL NETWORK: A Review

Reggie Scott loved The Social Network!

Reggie Scott noted that The Social Network stars Jesse Eisenberg, future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake and Armie Hammer in a cleverly filmed dual role.

The Social Network was written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men) and directed by Denver-born David Fincher (Fight Club).

Reggie Scott also noticed that Rooney Mara plays a small but pivotal role in The Social Network. She was recently cast as Lisabeth in the Fincher-directed American version of the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This movie is a veritable cornucopia of future movie stars!

Reggie Scott sums up The Social Network thusly: it is a biopic of sorts about the invention and growing pains of the world's most popular Internet social networking site, Facebook. Dig this--the movie posits the idea that Marc Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), Facebook's creator, dreamed up the genesis of his multibillion dollar empire while he was an undergrad at Harvard, fulminating drunkenly after his girlfriend (Mara) broke up with him. Seems Zuckerberg is a programming and mathematical genius who doesn't have many social skills with women--or anybody else. Asperger much?

Reggie Scott dug the delicious irony of the movie's thesis about Facebook and Zuckerberg...that a guy who didn't have much real use for social contact became the world's youngest billionaire by inventing a website that allows everyone to become more socially connected to their friends and acquaintances. But, in a final twist, those connections are limited and proscribed by what can be conveyed in a status update and a response...which in turn distances people from the very human connections they crave and which Facebook claims to traffic in.

Reggie Scott says that The Social Network isn't a dry "history of" movie though. It crackles with sharp, interesting dialogue and is driven by one of the oldest stories you can tell--a tale of greed told from different compelling points of view. And every performance is spot on, especially Timberlake, who plays playboy Internet entrepreneur Sean Parker, who started Napster and was an early investor and promoter of Facebook--but barely survived to talk about it.

Reggie Scott says you should definitely go see The Social Network! You won't be disappointed!

(Rated PG-13, this is that rare movie nowadays that has little real profanity, no violence and few scenes of sensuality that, while they convey exactly what is happening, still manage to be fairly tasteful. Go figure.)
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Sidebar: My Five Favorite David Fincher Films

Fincher is one of my favorite current film directors and my admiration for him grows year-by-year. He is one of the few directors who has never made a film that wasn't compelling to watch...they may not all be great, but they are all interesting, visually distinctive and compelling on some level. My personal favorite Fincher films:

Fight Club (1999) - ahead of its time and still vastly underappreciated
Seven (1995) - a taut, masterful mystery thriller
The Social Network (2010)
The Game (1997) - mind games have never been so much fun in the movies
Zodiac (2007) - moody and poetic, made all the more so by its ambivalent ending.

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Some Final Fall TV Thoughts

If you see no other new series premieres this fall, you must check out the pilot episode of the new IFC David Cross/Will Arnett comedy "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret." I won't say much about it here, other than that it has been a long time since I've watched anything as demented, original, dark and laugh-out-loud funny as Margaret. Cross plays the title character and even if future episodes don't turn out to be as inventive or funny, he should get an Emmy nomination next year just for his work in the premiere, which he also wrote. So there.

Peace...