The Social Reckoning review: Aaron Sorkins Facebook sequel is a plodding, unnecessary bore

Runtime: 112 minutes.Rated R (language, including frequent sexual expletives and profanity).

In theaters.Imagine a movie in which a dark corporate conspiracy is uncovered: McDonald’s is making its customers fat — and the suits all know it.Duh, right?Well, that’s not far off from the takeaway of writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s disappointing and unnecessary follow-up to “The Social Network,” “The Social Reckoning,” about the damage Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and Meta went on to inflict on the world.Social media is bad and brings out the worst in everybody.

Yeah, yeah.Big whoop.To call “Reckoning” a sequel feels wrong.

“The Social Network,” one of the best studio films of this century, is infinitely superior and tonally unrecognizable from this high-on-its-own-supply dud in every way.Director David Fincher’s triumph took a relatively recent event (Facebook was founded in 2004; the movie hit theaters in 2011) and turned it into a sexy, unlikely and timeless underdog story.

Our hero was an unapologetic jerk with undeniable genius powered by a chip on his shoulder, yet we rooted for him hard anyway.Sorkin’s script exploded with dazzling wit and heart-pumping drama.

And Jesse Eisenberg, casting perfection, became a star.Next to it, foghorn “Reckoning” is forgettable, plodding, obvious and unaccomplished. If “Network” was ballet shoes, this “All The Zuckerberg’s Men” is soggy rain boots.It should never have been made.Sorkin, one of the only name-brand screenwriters alive, does not prove that he still deserves that vaunted status.This is an awful screenplay: A jargon-obsessed, limp, rudimentary bullet-pointed rundown of unexciting events marred further by lame jokes, ugly cinematography and Sorkin’s most self-indulgent tendencies.

The central Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), for example, needlessly natters on about the musical “Showboat” and the novel “A Tale of Two Cities,” much like P...