Sometimes the hype is justified. David Fincher's cold eye collides
smashingly with Aaron Sorkin's hot keyboard, and the storm that
deluges the screen leaves us wet with excitement. Think of it as A Few
Good Geeks and you get an idea of the hyper-intensity, the charismatic
anti-hero, and the impossibly satisfying dialogue. Impossible,
because not even Harvard geniuses, their lawyers, their rivals and
even their girlfriends are this clever all the time. But of course,
that's not the point. Sorkin's reductive screenplay works as sheer
entertainment, not history. Does anyone seriously believe that
explosive phenomena like Facebook and Napster came about because their
creators struck out with girls? It's cheap psychologizing, but you let
it go — again, because you're so caught up in the fun of it all. It
needs hardly be said that this was the role Jesse Eisenberg (much
praised by me in other reviews on this site) was born to play. To
sustain a dislikable crankiness for two hours and still make the
audience fall in love with him is simply remarkable. Andrew Garfield
is a model of self-torture; you feel his pain and by the end wish
desperately for a rapprochement that never comes. And if Justin
Timberlake doesn't quite rise to their level, it may be that he (like
the “Harvard twins”) is a bit less fleshed out. And what a wonderfully
apt choice of Beatles song to play everyone out over the credits. This
one you gotta see. — Jeff Schultz