I'll be posting a link to this review onto my facebook page!

Rating: 7/10 (8 October 2010)

From the director David FINCHER (The Curious case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club, Se7en), THE SOCIAL NETWORK is the story of the development and rise and rise of the world-wide Social Networking phenomena FACEBOOK.
Shortly after breaking up with his girlfriend, Harvard computer nurd Mark Zuckerberg (JESSE EISENBERG) sits down at his computer and "blogs" bad things about his now ex-girlfriend .. and, in an act of revenge decides to create a website where students can "grade" the girls within the university. News of the site goes around like wildfire and they get hundreds of students accessing it  and an idea was born  the power of the internet as a revolutionary new communication medium for social networking
Many began to see the potential in the new social medium and attempt to jump on the bandwagon and get in at an early stage  with the hapless Winklevoss brothers claiming to have spawned the original idea of having a unique "Harvard" exclusive social site  many tried and many fail  but it is the Mark Zuckerberg's tenacity and clarity of focus with THE FACEBOOK site launched in Feb 2004, that forces it's way through the dead wood and grows and grows in popularity at a phenomenal speed  and pretty soon it has expanded to many of the other universities and schools
As a computer genius come geek, Zuckerberg is himself a social misfit that finds human interaction and communication difficult, and he turns to his one true friend Eduardo Saverin (ably played by Andrew Garfield), for financial support in setting up the servers, routers and infrastructure required to cope with the every increasing demand for the Facebook site  Zuckerberg and Saverin decide to jointly split the company they create 70 / 30 (in favour of Zuckerberg).
Things progress well until Saverin decides there is a need for more investment and to get advertisers interested  a move which Zuckerberg opposes claiming that it would detract from the "purity" of the Facebook idea
Meanwhile on the scene comes the another headlining entrepreneur way ahead of his time – Sean Parker (played excellently by Justin Timberlake) – the founder and genius behind NAPSTER and music downloading / sharing site. Fresh from a recent legal defeat against the Music industry (over Napster), Sean still believes he has won by changing the face of the music industry forever . And he is chomping at the bit for a new challenge – and sees THE FACEBOOK as the next big thing (he is actually the one who suggested renaming it to just FACEBOOK).
There follows a series on wide parties and roller-coaster wheeling and dealings and Sean Parker eventually engineers a situation where there is finally a breakdown in relationships between Zuckerberg and Saverin and they go their separate ways.
The film is primarily based around the legal dispute of over ownership of Facebook brand and intellectual copy write of the product – by the Winklevoss brothers and Eduardo Saverin against Zuckerberg with flashbacks to previous times elaborating on claims and counter-claims made during the case.
Launched in February 2004, Facebook was born, and a mere six years and 500 million friends later, making Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history ... but as the tagline for the film states – "you don't get 500 Million friends without making some enemies "
I must admit after seeing Jesse Eisenberg's awful performances in the truly woeful Zombieland and Adventureland movies – I really didn't hold out much hope for his acting career  but I was pleasantly surprised in this instance  as in the Social Network he is "better" (still not great) but he can actually act
With no real "heavy-weights" in the acting cast – this was a film that had to stand up and fight with a decent story line – which I was quite impressed with (being a "true" and interesting story)
As a trivia side point, the director of this movie David Fincher will also be taking the reins to direct the "Americanised" version (God help us all ) of the remake of excellent THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO  along with Rooney Mara (who plays Erica Albright in the Social Network) taking on the leading role of Lisbeth Salander.
I imagine that this will be a popular movie as almost everyone I know has a facebook account – and I'll even be posting a link to this review onto my facebook page!