With 2010’s “The Social Network”, director David Fincher blew audiences away with his searing retelling of the founding of the social networking website Facebook. The movie was a critical and cultural smash hit, earning big money at the box office and winning numerous end-of-the-year accolades including three Academy Awards. One of those three Oscars went to Aaron Sorkin for his fast-paced, razor-sharp, semi-biographical screenplay.

Now sixteen years later we get “The Social Reckoning”, a standalone sequel that dramatizes the 2021 Facebook leak by whistleblowers Frances Haugen and Jeff Horwitz. Fincher passed on directing a sequel. And despite being offered a sizable check from the studio, Jesse Eisenberg also declined to return as billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. That left Sorkin, who both writes and directs a film that desperately tries to capture the style and substance of “The Social Network”. It fails.

“The Social Reckoning” is a pale imitation of its vastly superior spiritual predecessor. Sorkin attempts to cover a lot of ground. But his blandly mechanical writing and direction dulls the story’s impact while leaving little room for emotional investment. Much of his script is fueled by a selective outrage and is too absorbed in its own sense of self-importance. At other times it is procedural to a fault, leaving it often feeling coldly systematic as it moves us from one point to the next. This even impacts the performances, but more on them in a second.

Frances Haugen is played by Mikey Madison who gives a dramatically different performance than her blaring Oscar-winning turn in “Anora”. Her Frances is a bit awkward and slightly neurotic. She’s also principled and driven, which are big reasons she went to work for Facebook as a data engineer. Frances was hired to the company’s Civic Integrity team where she hoped to address the alarming increase of harmful content and misinformation across the platform. But after she witnesses Facebook’s negligence firsthand, her mission shifts to exposing the company’s sins to the world.

Meanwhile investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) is secretly working on a story for the Wall Street Journal that could blow the lid off of Facebook’s transgressions. But he needs evidence which the company does a good job hiding. Jeff’s investigation gets a boost after he is contacted by a frightened yet determined Frances. After several rinse-and-repeat scenes showing Frances’ hesitation, the two finally team up to bring the Facebook story to light.

As that’s going on, Sorkin repeatedly jumps forward one year to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) preparing for his upcoming appearance before Congress. The scenes are a series of back-and-forths between Zuckerberg and his legal counsel and crisis management team. Though staged as the film’s most intense scenes, they’re arguably the most superfluous. They’re not helped by Strong’s hilariously stiff and robotic performance. I realize he and Sorkin are making a point. But Strong more closely resembles a Martian than a functioning CEO.

By the second half, the movie’s problems really start to mount. More and more moments feel like filler rather than something consequential. The awkward swings at humor feel wildly out of place. Underdeveloped characters pop in and out with little to no impact. Even Frances and Jeff struggle under Sorkin’s script. Both exist in their own bubbles and never come off as a cohesive pair. Then you have the eye-rolling all-caps ending that is a clunky mix of overwrought heavy-handedness and cheesy fist-pumping.

With “The Social Reckoning”, Sorkin tries to create something incisive and important. Instead he delivers a head-scratching misfire that doesn’t pack near the punch that it should. It’s a movie full of weird inventions, needless exaggerations, and a scattershot focus that undermines its weighty subject matter. Considering how well “The Social Network” has held up over the years, it’s a shame that its follow-up is neither timely or timeless.

VERDICT – 2 STARSHIP