The Social Network & The Cool Factor



Overall Rating = 5 out of 5 stars.

The Social Network introduces us, through a series of stunning visual effects, to the world of computer programming and the engineering genius that led to innovative development of Facebook. And it’s amazing the movie manages to educate us about this complex technology without making us feel stupid. Add in an exciting dose of college lifestyle, college parties, and the “cool” factor which seems to surround anything Facebook, and you have the makings of an extremely cool and entertaining movie. But perhaps the biggest accomplishment of The Social Network is to give us an interesting peek into the brilliant but socially dysfunctional mind of Facebook’s whiz kid founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Film director David Fincher’s The Social Network, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, gives us an off-kilter look at the many intrigues surrounding the founding of Facebook. Focusing the story through the lens of several lawsuits brought against the founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, we gain a retrospective glimpse into the development of Facebook and the subsequent growing pains that accompanied this fragile startup. The courtroom drama highlights the sometimes greedy, seedy world of venture capitalism and their vulturous relationships with startup companies, and attempts to make intelligible the intangible concepts of stealing intellectual property.

The Social Network’s casting is thoughtful. Jesse Eisenberg who is such a good ringer for Mark Zuckerberg is so seamless in his role that I often forgot he wasn’t the real Zuckerberg. Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s initial business partner, captures the desperation of someone struggling to stay afloat amid overwhelming circumstances. Justin Timberlake seethes charisma in an award-worthy performance as Napster founder Sean Parker. Armie Hammer and Josh Pence as the Winklevoss brothers and Max Minghella as Divya Narendra add great dramatic tension to the movie's plot as Zuckerberg's plantiffs.

Director Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin deliver a movie which is wholly engrossing and extraordinarily paced. The Social Network will not clear up your confusion about the difference between an algorithm and a logarithm, but this wonderfully informative movie will educate most non-techies about the development of perhaps the most revolutionary and significant social media platform in technological history. In fact, considering the topic matter, The Social Network is a much better movie than I thought possible. The Social Network has a cool factor of 5 out of 5 stars.