The quietly growing underground cabal of Social Network dissers has, in Manohla Dargis‘s just-posted N.Y. Times review, another cartwheel-in-the-lobby piece to get riled about. Enough, dammit! Too many people are flipping for this thing and we’re sick of it. This is war! We need to get together this weekend and plan a counter-attack.
Who will be the anti-Social Network crusader to lead the troops? Who will be their King Harry? David Poland? Armond White? For those who haven’t yet reviewed it (particularly for a certain type of ego-driven critic), there is only way to not sound like a me-too kiss-ass.
“The Social Network takes place in the recognizable here and now,” Dargis says in her final paragraph, “although there are moments when it has the flavor of science fiction (it would make a nice double bill with The Matrix) even as it evokes 19th-century narratives of ambition. (‘To be young, to have a thirst for society, to be hungry for a woman,’ Balzac writes in Le Pere Goriot.)
“The movie opens with a couple in a crowded college bar and ends with a man alone in a room repeatedly hitting refresh on his laptop. In between, director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin offer up a creation story for the digital age and something of a morality tale, one driven by desire, marked by triumph, tainted by betrayal and inspired by the new gospel: the geek shall inherit the earth.”