LIKE! Paul reviews The Social Network

I think a great movie is one that answers more questions than we know to ask and tells us a story that we already know and didn’t realize we cared about.
Facebook is a part of the fabric of our daily life, or at least it cuts a very wide path.
I’m not currently a member but I use it for one of my businesses. It works. I have a secret to confess and anyone who knows me won’t believe this but even I don’t find the minutae of what I do all that fascinating. Not even the big stuff. It’s all pretty hum drum. I wouldn’t bother to check my status on anything I don’t even watch the weather network. Still, the thing has millions and millions of members, friending each other, friending their friends’ friends, buying them imaginary drinks, updating their status and in the ultimate act of post modern romanticide, unfriending. The 2010 precursor to break up is a message that says, We need to not talk.
These are new words, and new actions. It is not uncommon to show someone how you feel about them by reflecting your relationship status through your  profile
Its definitely a phenomena but  how is that a movie?
Well it helps to bring in Aaron Sorkin to write your screenplay. That guy can tell a story.
Really, Facebook is just another way for nerds to meet girls, and like most great inventions it starts with a guy being rejected by a girl.
Ok I made that part up.
And once again I digress.

Here’s the thing. Like alot of things that happen, the guy who invents Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is incapable of benefitting from it. He’s a billionaire in his 20s living the dream, able to have a lifestyle most aren’t imaginative to even dream of and he’s stuck in his basement writing code.
Of course he is.
Facebook was an accident, more an act of revenge inspired by a woman who didn’t so much reject him but just gave up on his complete and total ineptitude on a social level.
Their date is the highlight reel of a bad night out. She calls him a part of the anatomy not associated with anything good.
He goes home, crashes into the facebooks of the various dorms of Harvard and steals the pics therein and creates a web site that rates the women of Harvard, (of which she is one.) Of course this is after several beers.
The site’s illegal of course and immoral and so popular that it crashes the servers on campus.
Zuckerberg knows he’s onto something big and by amalgamating with another site grows it into something bigger.
It grows.
Like most geniuses he can’t take care of the small details of his life and as things start to build he meets Sean Parker, of Napster and Plaxo fame, and Parker knows what to do.
They take it on the road and Parker smells financial paydirt, something that has eluded him to date despite the huge success of his little inventions. Parker is played by Justin Timberlake who I want to hate so much but he’s so damn interesting it makes it tough.

He provides the film’s momentum and adds all the tension. He essentially freezes out the guys who gave Mark the original formula and finances for making the whole thing work. The “twins” get screwed, his roommate gets screwed and more by Zuckerberg’s lack of attention to details than his lack of grtitude. Of course Parker’s willingness to take advantage of the situation helps.
There’s a lawsuit. Bad feelings all around and in the middle of that storm Facebook just grows and grows and well, you get the idea.
Meanwhile, our hero is so socially inept that he doesn’t even have the social skills to develop a drug or sexual addiction, despite ample opportunity and the best efforts of the omnipresent, slightly malevolent  Napster head.
Ultimately we know most of the story.
Facebook is huge, Zuckerberg is filthy rich and nobody cares about the twins. Or the room mates.
Spoiler alert: The twins are one guy, and he does a great job. We’ll mention him by name when he gets a starring role. Good writing, some solid performances, including the always nerdy but usually compelling Jesse Eisenberg. Make for a great film. That’s right. I said it  Great. Now go ahead and friend me so we can wrap this up.

As always, other opinions are welcome, but wrong. That’s it for this week. The cheque’s in the mail and I’m outta here.