The Social Network

            The Social Network is a 2010 drama directed by David Fincher (Se7en).  It stars Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland) as Mark Zuckerberg, Roony Mara (A Nightmare on Elm Street) as Erica Albright, and Andrew Garfield (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) as Eduardo Saverin.  The film is based on the events in the life of Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) during his time at Harvard when he created the wildly popular and successful social networking website Facebook. 

            The film goes through the events of the creation of Facebook, as well as the events of the various lawsuits that were filed against Mark Zuckerberg when he created Facebook.  Some of these events include being sued by a couple of twins that had initially come up with the idea for Facebook, and also being sued by his best friend Eduardo Saverin who got screwed out of his 30% shareholder status of the company.

            One of the best things about the film is the acting.  All of the actors do great jobs with their performances.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Justin Timberlake, who plays Sean Parker the creator of Napster, perform so well throughout the film.  I will say that in the beginning I was slightly annoyed by Jesse Eisenberg's technique of speaking at a rapid pace to depict Mark Zuckerberg.  However, over the course of the film it did start to fit the character.  Andrew Garfield who played Eduardo was probably the best performance throughout the film.

            The next biggest thing that really stood out to me was the cinematography of the film.  The director of photography Jeff Cronenweth really made a good looking film.  Over 2/3s of the film are very pleasing to look at.  The reason why I feel that this is so important is because I feel that if the movie was bland looking then it would not be nearly as enjoyable of the film.  The high production value really manages to pull the viewer into the experience and make it memorable.

            Overall, the film was pretty good.  It had some very strong acting and great cinematography.  I will say that I feel that the film is definitely over hyped and I really don't feel like this one deserves an Oscar.  However, I did still enjoy the film.  Overall, I would say it was defiantly a stronger film then Fincher's last film based on real events, Zodiac.  I would give the film a solid 3.75/5.