“But, Rosswife, that movie doesn’t come out until October 1st!” That’s right, children, but yours truly had a pass for an advanced screening and just came home from it. I will now attempt to write this movie review while battling a headache (due in part to dental work earlier in the day and the subsequent nap) while the movie is fresh in my mind.
via GoogleImages
In case you live under a rock, the movie The Social Network is about Mark Zuckerberg’s lawsuits following his creation of Facebook, formerly known as The Facebook. Remember when Facebook was exclusive and your school had to be on the drop down list of colleges to join? That’s when the movie takes place. (If you don’t remember this era, you’re too young or too old for Facebook and do everyone a favor and get off.)
I really want to tell you definitively whether or not to go see this movie, but at the moment I can’t. Because I just don’t know if it was good. I liked it, but I don’t know if it was good. I guess the part that bothers me the most is that I just don’t know how historically accurate this film was and, what’s probably worse, is I don’t know if the emotions Mark Zuckerberg feels in the movie, particularly at the end, are what he felt in real life. I’d like to they were.
What struck me right away was that it seemed like a pretty accurate portrayal of college life – at least where I went to school. Not so much with the secret societies and snobs who want to sue everyone, but there was that one guy who always wore shorts and flip-flops, even when it was twenty degrees outside. And the parties (minus the AEPi party) looked like parties you’d find at the frat quad – minus the girls dancing in their underwear, but I only went to one party on the quad so maybe they did do that there…
Anyfacebook, the acting was good, the music was good, the script had some funny zingers in it, but something was off. The first scene was long. The banter got redundant at times. At the end of the movie I swear three hours had passed, but in reality only two had. So there was that.
The end result is this: you leave the theatre thinking about Facebook. Really thinking about it. If you’re like me, you probably update your status on Facebook to say that you’ve seen the movie about Facebook. Facebook with worth billions and several users are to it like crack. They check their Facebook five times a day and spend hours on it, not even counting their obnoxious cafes in Cafe World. It’s a means to give out too much information, a way to privately stalk people who you would be unable to stalk without it, a way for petty drama to escalate and hurt feelings. In the end, does Facebook do more harm than good? Originally created as a way for people to see their social life on a website, but is that how it turned out? With people hiding behind their computer screens, their human side virtually invisible, is Facebook really showing mostly the bad side of people? The pictures of you wearing a short skirt and drinking from a tequila bottle? A video of you dressed up in a strange costume from Japan? A status about how much you hate your baby daddy? Things that hurt you chances at getting that new job (because you know employers check), hurt your chances at getting child support, or prove that you’re incapable of being a mature adult because you write your statuses in text speak? Surely this is not the Facebook that started at Harvard. But is, and is that because Zuckerberg was greedy? Who can say.
I guess I’ll say this then: I’ve worked it out. Go see it and try to figure out what it really means.
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