I know that this film takes a lot of creative liberties with the actual story behind the creation of Facebook, but it does get the gist of it at least. I went into it with moderately high expectations simply because of all the positive things that I had heard about it, but also went in open-minded because I know a lot of “based on a true story” movies aren’t exactly for me, though I do certainly appreciate them. Having David Fincher as the director definitely heightened my expectations, though.

I was very satisfied with The Social Network overall. The thing that stood out to me the most was the dialogue. I feel like almost every line was not only needed for the story, but also incredibly intriguing to watch and listen to. All the conversations and the dynamics the characters had between one another were very interesting to watch, to say the least. You felt excitement, tension, and interest at all the right times because of this.

This also correlates with the editing of the film. Not only was the dialogue itself great, but the editing enhanced quite literally all of the conversations throughout the runtime. It cut back and focused on characters at just the right times and durations. I’m by no means a film expert, but even I was able to notice how amazing the editing was here. Definitely a well-deserved Oscar win on that part.

I was also a big fan of the story itself. It’s probably weird to talk about the story after the dialogue and editing, but it’s just because the dialogue and editing were just that good. It was neat seeing two broke college students full of potential break quite literally the entire internet, eventually leading to one of the most successful companies ever invented. It wasn’t just that simple, though, as we see in both of our main leads and entrepreneurs, Mark Zuckerberg (duh) and his roommate/friend, Eduardo, that moral sacrifices have to be made for the success of the company itself.

Jesse Eisenberg and honestly, in particular, Andrew Garfield, both give fantastic performances throughout. They sell both of their roles and you buy into them completely. You can always also tell exactly what their motivations are, what their morals are, and what they want, which made it easy to grasp both of them. The reason I said “in particular” for Andrew Garfield’s performance is that while Jesse Eisenberg’s performance was also great, it also felt like a traditional Jesse Eisenberg performance to me. He’s a very good actor, but he honestly has kind of acted the same in all of the roles I’ve seen him in. Andrew Garfield on the other hand, gives probably the best performance that I’ve seen of him. You see both the excitement and frustration clearly in his character, and he has probably the standout scene towards the very end of the movie.

Really the only criticism I have of The Social Network is that the pacing could definitely be a bit hit-or-miss at times. This is what I find most common in movies based on true stories, which is the main reason why I don’t always gravitate towards those types of films. Describing the pacing of this movie itself, it really just came down to some parts of the movie that felt a bit slow and not super important to the overall story. This wasn’t a big deal at all though, so it is definitely a light criticism.

I don’t have any major criticisms of the movie, and had a good time with it overall. The acting, editing, and story were all really good and kept me interested pretty much the whole time.