The Social Network

So Mrs. and I finally saw The Social Network. We both thought it was good not great. I think that if I had seen it without knowing it was nominated for Best Picture, that nomination would have surprised me. Again, not that it isn’t a fine film; it’s just that it didn’t seem like the kind of film to win an Academy Award. But maybe it was just a down year for movies. Either way I’ll probably have to change my Best Picture prediction to The King’s Speech.

That said, I definitely recommend seeing The Social Network. The script is solid, mixing witty dialogue and humor with an interesting story. The acting is also very good. Jesse Eisenberg does a fantastic job as Mark Zuckerberg, as does Armie Hammer playing both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (or as Zuckerberg refers to them in the movie – the Winklevi). Hammer perfectly portrays the Winklevoss twins as spoiled rich kids (and I’m referring of course to the characters in the movie, since I have no idea if the actual Winklevoss twins are like that – hey, I don’t want them suing me). And if you were trying to create a name for two spoiled rich twins, could you even make up something better than “Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss”? Just awesome.

I’m not sure how much of the movie is true, but it does make for a good story. Although it didn’t make me want to run and join Facebook, it was interesting to see how it all started and amazing to think that a few college buddies drinking beer and ranking the hotness of female students would lead to a billion dollar company. My friends and I spent many a night like that in college and the closest we came to a billion dollar idea was successfully building a pyramid out of empty beer cans. If nothing else it’s insane that (at least according to Wikipedia) Facebook is currently worth $41 billion and 41.6% of the U.S. population has an account. That has nothing to do with the movie, but shocking to me nonetheless.