Anti-'Social'

"The Social Network" is a very good movie. In my mind though, awards and high praise should be reserved for great movies. I had the same feeling last year with "The Hurt Locker." In each of these films, there were a few scenes or portrayals that missed the mark completely but everyone just seemed to overlook them. Watching movies is an emotional experience, and I have loved my fair share of movies with holes in them, but to act like a movie "defines a generation" or is "the film of the year" like so many critics have said of TSN seems a bit over the top, in my humble opinion.

Here are the primary obstacles I have with this movie, and you are more than welcome to attempt to convince me otherwise.

Eduardo Saverin = Abused Puppy Dog?

I didn't like the way Saverin was portrayed in the movie, despite the strong performance by Andrew Garfield. I know a film needs to take it's liberties to tell a story, but Fincher and crew seemed to paint Saverin as a completely innocent bystander in the whole legal mess surrounding Facebook. Nowhere in the movie did they discuss the fact that Zuckerberg's parents funded much of the company upon it's start-up. Nowhere in the movie did they portray Saverin like the party animal he was when he attended school in New York City. Nowhere in the movie do we learn that Zuckerberg and Saverin weren't best friends at all. Instead, we get a very sad, almost abused puppy dog of a person who you just want to hug and tell that everything will be okay. I don't think the film would have been hurt at all had they portrayed him a little more accurately. And I'm not even going to get into his Asian girlfriend starting the fire in his apartment.

Will the Real Zuckerberg Please Stand Up

I felt the film could have done a better job defining who the real Zuckerberg was opposed from the smartass portrayed (brilliantly) by Jesse Eisenberg. I feel it's easy to capture someone on surface level, but it's more of a revelation when you can discover why the character is the way they are. From the interviews I've seen and articles I've read, Zuckerberg is not the jealousy driven animal many portions of TSN would suggest. There were moments in the movie that Michael Moore himself could have been directing as the propaganda was flowing so freely. If someone told me the Winklevoss twins funded this film I would believe it.

Not N'Sync With Reality

I didn't have a problem with Justin Timberlake's portrayal of Napster founder Sean Parker. What I did have a problem with though was the run-of-the-mill drug bust party scene. It seems like every teen/college themed comedy has one of these scenes. The music is too loud, the cops bust in, then one of the major characters (in this case Parker) gets arrested for drug or alcohol abuse. These moments are so overdone, and when in doing my research I learned that this incident never even happened (during the Facebook time-frame), I didn't see why it needed to be in the film at all.

The 1,000,000 Member Moment

Facebook hits their 1,000,000 member at the same moment Eduardo Saverin, Sean Parker, and Mark Zuckerberg were having their argument dealing with Saverin's share of the company. This seemed to cram too much into one scene, and anyone who gives it a second thought knows that it would be very unrealistic for these two things to happen at the exact same time.

Is Harvard a Party School?

I didn't go to Harvard, so I am completely opening myself up here and can stand to be corrected. Throughout this movie, the glimpse of Harvard I saw was that it was a party school. It looked cool - not at all what I picture when I walk around the campus and surrounding areas when I go into Cambridge. The way TSN portrayed this school seemed like something pulled from the CW network, not a critical darling of a film. Just too many pretty people, parties, and not enough hitting the books.

In The Accidental Billionaires, the book on which this movie is based (which received nowhere near the positive reviews that TSN did), author Ben Mezrich starts out by saying that some portions of the book are "changed" or "imagined" to protect certain individuals involved in what really happened. Director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin have taken lead from Mezrich and continued to replace events that really happened with more Hollywood style, mainstream audience friendly moments. I don't expect any movie about true events to get everything 100% correct. I just hope that the film treats its subjects with the respect they deserve. I felt in some instances mentioned above, Fincher dropped the ball a bit. He made a very good movie, and got an abundance of great performances out of his strong cast. The writing was excellent, and the cinematography and score were Oscar-worthy. Do I think it deserves to win the Best Picture Oscar though (which it almost certainly will)? No. It just deserves attention, and maybe a little more than just the minimum amount.