It’s been a godawful month for Aaron Sorkin.
The man’s dealing with more crises than the Bartlet administration.
First came the 65-year-old writer-director’s sorry sequel to “The Social Network,” the thuddingly titled “The Social Reckoning.”
About a whistleblower exposing wrongdoing by Facebook in 2021, it was a bona fide Coke 2. Nobody needed it. Nobody.
Jeremy Strong seems as Mark Zuckerberg in a scene from “The Social Reckoning.” ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
“The Social Network,” the gripping 2010 underdog story starring a excellent Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the best movies of the previous 25 years. Didactic and overwritten “Reckoning” is nearer to an 8 a.m. lecture at Sorkin University. And most of the class slept in.
The film holds a 55% on RottenTomatoes (even that’s too beneficiant) and it has grossed only $16.9 million globally off a $30 million funds. Sony ripped the movie out of 2,000 theaters this weekend, its third in release, so that means bombs away.
Taking over as Zuck, Jeremy Strong was rather less believably human than a Roomba. And Sorkin changed David Fincher as director, a misguided and harmful swap.
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So, what of the Oscars in March? Might I recommend a journey to a faraway non-public island with no TVs instead?
And while you’re there, also guide a room for June’s Tony Awards.
Because this week on Broadway, a tough revival of Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men” opened at Lincoln Center. That navy courtroom drama, which first performed New York back in 1989, is what established the author as an rising drive. “You can’t handle the truth!,” et cetera, et cetera.
A revival of “A Few Good Men” opened to weak critiques on Broadway. Bruce Glikas/WireImage
Sorkin took off from there. Rob Reiner’s 1992 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson was a Best Picture Oscar nominee. “The American President” arrived in 1995 and his TV opus “The West Wing” came to NBC 4 years after that.
But the critiques of the Lincoln Center show weren’t so scorching on Thursday evening. A few miffed critics knocked the script — yours really in The Post, Charles Isherwood in the Wall Street Journal and Alexis Soloski in The Times.
That shocked me. I figured that if there’s any protected space for Sorkin, it’s the Upper West Side. Not so much, apparently.
Sorkin opted to both write and direct his sequel to “The Social Network.” REUTERS
We’ve reached the Sorkin Reckoning.
What’s occurred?
Well, it must first be acknowledged that “Reckoning” is qualitatively Sorkin’s worst piece of writing in a very long time.
He’s identified — or was identified — for his dialogue’s breakneck pace and wit. Yet all of the sudden in this horrible film, he’s banging out fee-fi-fo-fum exchanges like this one.
When WSJ author Jeff Horwitz, performed by Jeremy Allen White, tells Facebook worker Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were not truly political reporters, but metro reporters, she mystifyingly responds, “They use mousse?”.
“The Social Network” stays one of the best movies of the previous 25 years. ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Sorkin himself might make a groaner metrosexual crack at a social gathering and get a kick out of it, but a younger girl in tech in 2020s California? No means. And frankly the joke is silly no matter who says it.
The man has also lost his muscularity. Just as his once crackling means with phrases has been snuffed out, so too has the author’s capacity to make us really feel anything. Especially in political or politically adjoining tales such as “Reckoning,” Sorkin used to be a professional at manipulating our hearts into beating quicker.
Think Martin Sheen’s fanciful President Bartlet reciting some poem while orchestral music swells, Josh Lyman eloquently dressing down a imply outdated lobbyist or Eisenberg’s Zuck during his deposition snapping, “You have part of my attention. You have the minimum amount.”
Chills.
Sorkin’s “West Wing” type has grown retro. ©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection
Now America’s only name-brand screenwriter has become a cold essayist — a David Mamet of the left whose unrealistic and unappealing automaton characters spout off scientific info while sounding just like him. Cranky. “Reckoning” is a chore to watch.
But “A Few Good Men” isn’t new. The play has been around for 37 years. Why isn’t it resonating anymore?
I’m satisfied the urge for food for Sorkin’s schtick has dried up. Across the political spectrum, the public no longer romanticizes elected officers, or colonels, or newsrooms or tech geniuses.
They don’t believe those people communicate in Wildean repartee behind closed doorways, nor do they essentially need them to. Heck, even the well-known “West Wing” walk-and-talk is useless. Most of us from the White House on down are chained to our desks and chat with colleagues on messaging platforms.
His type is as retro as the Macarena.
Still, every so usually Sorkin or a member of the “West Wing” forged will tease a potential reboot, as if that could ever work.
But it seems clear to me after these October surprises that the Sorkin administration has finally reached its time period restrict.
