One of the best movies I've seen all year. They had me hooked from the trailer a month ago, brilliantly incorporating a clever cover of Radiohead's "Creep." It wasn't just the style of the song but they lyrics that foretold the story to come. The film's twin strengths are the acting and the dialogue. Everyone's raving about Justin Timberlake, and understandably so, as he excels as the prissy, pompous Sean Parker. One wonders if Timberlake had to stretch much to play this part. But the real stars are the two leads, Jesse Eisenberg as facebook founder and true asshole Mark Zuckerberg, and Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, facebook's initial CFO and bankroller, and Zuckerberg's only friend, naively. Aaron Sorkin brings the lively reparte from his West Wing TV show in the film's script. The running time is a little long, at 2hrs, but director David Fincher effectively builds the tension to a climatic confrontation between Zuckerberg and Saverin beautifully executed by the actors.
One other thing that bears commenting is how male a world computing is as reflected in the movie. All of the key characters are men, and women only exist as sexual objects for the pleasure of men. Except for Erica Albright, especially in the opening scene, who is a manifestation of Zuckerberg's painful lack of social skills, particularly with women. As an ironic subnote, the film points out that we wouldn't have facebook or Napster without computer geeks desperately failing to landing chicks.
Even if you don't use facebook (which I don't), the film is a wonderfully-made tale of huge monetary success coming at the expense of devastating relationship failures.
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