The Social Network
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: October 1, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
95
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
41
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Boxoffice MagazinePete Hammond
With a thieves den of borderline-Shakespearian characters, a wickedly literate screenplay, potent direction by David Fincher, an exceptional ensemble cast and subject matter that speaks to a generation and well beyond, The Social Network is mesmerizing. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott
The result is a ripped-from-the-Zeitgeist film that is razor-sharp, an astute and funny portrait of the early 2000s, with all its LOL's, its IMO's and its WTF's. Mostly its WTF's. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
The power of The Social Network is that Zuckerberg is a weasel with a mission that can never be dismissed. The movie suggests that he may have built his ambivalence about human connection into Facebook's very DNA. That's what makes him a jerk-hero for our time. Read full review
100
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
It's one of the best movies of the year, one of the best entries ever in the Way We Live Now oeuvre. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy Burr
On the level of craft, the movie's just absurdly enjoyable. Sorkin's dialogue dazzles; the photography is burnished and sleek; the editing confidently sorts out a complex narrative. Read full review
100
Orlando SentinelRoger Moore
The performances, direction and writing of one of the best pictures of 2010 make this Social Network every bit as addictive, and a little chilling as well. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve Persall
This is a remarkable film for more reasons than its antihero, from the cyberspeed wisdom of Aaron Sorkin's screenplay to Jeff Cronenweth's camera prowling the excesses of youthful genius gone wild. Read full review
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
David Fincher obsesses about obsessive people. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Most of all, it is the improbably entertaining story of how new media are altering the very nature of courtship and friendship. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Keep your eyes on Garfield - he's shatteringly good, the soul of a film that might otherwise be without one. The Social Network is the movie of the year. But Fincher and Sorkin triumph by taking it further. Lacing their scathing wit with an aching sadness, they define the dark irony of the past decade. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
A work deeper than its nickname, "The Facebook Movie," hints at - coils around your brain. Weeks after seeing it, moments from it will haunt you. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin Wilson
A film that's at once timely and timeless. Read full review
100
NPRBob Mondello
Terrific entertainment - an unlikely thriller that makes business ethics, class distinctions and intellectual-property arguments sexy, that zips through two hours quicker than you can say "relationship status," and that'll likely fascinate pretty much anyone not named Zuckerberg. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
The Social Network has understandably been compared to "Citizen Kane" in its depiction of a man who changes society through bending an emergent technology to his will. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
This account of Facebook's founder, and of the website's explosive growth, quickly lifts you to a state of exhilaration, and pretty much keeps you there for two hours. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
The rewards for paying attention are mammoth and exhilarating. This is a high-IQ movie that gives viewers an IQ high. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Shot to shot, scene to scene, The Social Network nearly never puts a foot wrong or, really, does anything to make you feel less than compelled. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
David Fincher's film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Smartly written by Aaron Sorkin, directed to within an inch of its life by David Fincher and anchored by a perfectly pitched performance by Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network is a barn-burner of a tale that unfolds at a splendid clip. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Delivers the heady, rib-tickling rush of an action picture, and it gradually builds to an emotional wallop that blindsides you. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
But make no mistake, whether the movie is fair or horribly unfair - I know nothing of the actual facts and can't make that determination - its portrait of Zuckerberg is a hatchet job of epic and perhaps lasting proportions. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The film owes much of its success to the inspired pairing of Fincher and Sorkin. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The founding of Facebook becomes a tale for our times in this masterful social drama. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
The film comes down to a mesmerizing portrait of a man who in any other age would perhaps be deemed nuts or useless, but in the Internet age has this mental agility to transform an idea into an empire. Read full review
100
VarietyJustin Chang
Continues Fincher's fascinating transition from genre filmmaker extraordinaire to indelible chronicler of our times. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
It's a grandly entertaining reminder of everything we used to go to the movies for (and still can't get online): sparkling dialogue, thorny situations, soulful performances, and an unusually open-ended and relevant engagement with a major social issue of the day: how we (dis)connect. Read full review
100
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Brilliantly entertaining and emotionally wrenching. Read full review
100
New York PostLou Lumenick
Quite possibly the first truly great fact-based movie of the 21st century. Read full review
95
MovielineStephanie Zacharek
Fincher and his screenwriter, TV writer-god Aaron Sorkin, have made a seemingly modest picture that achieves something close to greatness the old-fashioned, slow-burning way: By telling a story with faces, dialogue and body language of all types, from awkward to swaggering. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Zuckerberg's story ends up feeling bigger than his own life. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
When Mr. Eisenberg makes Mark's face go blank, the character seems scarily emptied out: it's a subtly great, at times unsettling, performance. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
All I can say about Timberlake's performance as the thoroughly odious, desperately seductive, textbook-case metrosexual Parker is that he brings so much reptilian fun that he unbalances the movie, almost fatally. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
Blisteringly entertaining. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Eisenberg, one of those young actors who has existed just below the radar for several years now (he was the lead in both "Zombieland" and "Adventureland," not to be confused with one another), deserves an Oscar for this dead-on portrayal of a temperamental genius. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
It has the staccato wit of a drawing-room comedy, the fatal flaw of a tragic romance and the buzzy immediacy of a front-page headline, all powered by a kinetic engine typically found in an action flick. And that's just the opening scene. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Is director David Fincher's film the stuff of greatness? Not quite. But the picture is very, very good. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
The problem is, the geek in question, at least as Jesse Eisenberg plays him, doesn't have the emotional expansiveness to fill out a movie. Perhaps sensing this, the filmmakers play out the story line from multiple points of view and crowd the stage with a pageant of voluble supporting characters. Read full review
80
SlateDana Stevens
The Social Network wants to be a social satire, a miniaturist comedy of manners, and a Greek tragedy; it bites off a lot, at times more than it can chew. But even the unmasticated morsels are pretty tasty. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon Wise
A rich, understated character drama that gleefully exposes the petty playground politics at the centre of one of the internet-era's most bitter court cases. Read full review
75
ObserverRex Reed
This film transcends its trendy, obvious limitations with enough vitality and vitriol to make it as informative and breathless as it is entertaining. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Corny as that is, the film's nadir comes when Zuckerberg's pretty young lawyer comforts him (or us) with the mealy-mouthed observation, "You're not an asshole, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be one." Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
It's an entertainingly cynical small movie. Aaron Sorkin's dialogue tumbles out so fast it's as if the characters want their brains to keep pace with their processors; they talk like they keyboard, like Fincher directs, with no time for niceties. Read full review
More From This Movie

95 Critic Reviews

8.2 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 86 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
2 84 Are You There God? It's Me,...
3 78 John Wick: Chapter 4
4 75 Polite Society
5 73 Air
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL