The Social Network

This really, really wasn't a movie for me.  The target audience is basically your middle-tier Facebook user, the one that doesn't post a million terrible status updates but still joins mawkish "I DUN CARE ABOUT WHAT YOUR BABY DID" groups, laughs at people playing Farmville but coo when they get gifts or receive 50 birthday wishes.*  It did seem pretty disinterested in paying attention to old-guard internet lamers like me, what with people referring to blogging when there was only terrible shit like Livejournal, or treating Livejournal like some sort of proto twitter.  It's dumb to bitch about stuff like that, and hell, maybe the screenwriter was trying to make some secret point about how technology really doesn't change our social habits no matter how many oh-point-ohs we stumble into.  All I know is that it threw me out of the movie.  But then, the movie didn't seem to be interested in helping me deal with the incongruity, instead treating those mid-2000s like a slightly lamer present day.  The Social Network is the first movie that really stuck into my age.  The only real silver lining to that point is that this movie is going to be The Net level dated.

While hearing "Friendster" just irritated me, what ultimately led to my disliking this movie more than Inception (MICRO REVIEW: Like every other Nolan film, fun action sequences supporting d33p plotlines designed to encourage the most ephemeral thinking possible) was Fincher's hellbent desire to have his film both ways, as your stereotypical genre film and some great thinking man's drama. 

Most of the movie is in the former mode, though including lots of rapid cuts and narrative barrel rolls so you don't get confused and hesitate about discussing the DEEP ASPECTS of the film.  Don't be deceived by those cool camera angles and smooth dialogue, The Social Network doesn't really want you to consider the sides of the drama.  All the cinematic tricks are ultimately just long shadows on the 2-D characteristics: ZUCKERBURG TORTURED GENIUS, TWINS ENTITLED JERKS, JEW NAMED EDWARDO MORAL CENTER OF FILM, NSYNC LITERALLY GROWING DEVIL HORNS AND DEVIL BONER.  The entire film is just Fincher putting some late 90's AI programs into a chat room, recording the log, then having a rewriting staff render the material presentable to a generation that allows Ke$ha to live because of irony.

Then, after roughly 115 minutes of biopic brouhaha, we get the big reveal from a blandly attractive two-year legal associate, exactly the sort of demographic that Fincher expects will understand the brilliant subtext of things and who eats these important films with relish of the gods: blah blah guess what guys it's all actually really complicated like a creation myth the digital age redemption.  It's brilliantly retarded, in a way, like if the final scene from Citizen Kane was replaced with Welles' fat older self telling the audience that he has to return to his home planet.  Of course, it's also the ultimate intellectual copout, santa claus winking when the kids realize he's actually real, I thought those archetypes were the extent of the human experience but I guess there's more to this story after all OF COURSE THERE IS YOU STUPID FUCK

*: you might wonder what the upper tier of facebooks users are.  the answer is