Very thought-provoking and real

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2011)

I'd like to give this at least an 8.5. Maybe one day IMDb will implement a system that allows decimals. Oh well.
Honestly I thought this movie would be underwhelming just because many of us know the gist of the story. I underestimated the creators and actors because this was a very well done film all around.
I'm all about court room dramas and internet culture separately and it's all blended well here. The actors are all pretty much unknown to me but I enjoyed just about everyone and no one was cliché or distracting. All were believable. The movie is never boring either so I appreciated the deliberate and consistent pace. Going back and forth from the evolution of the site to the law suits was done perfectly.
I'm not really sure why I really liked but didn't love it. There's virtually nothing wrong with it. Maybe it's just because Facebook is such a part of our culture nowadays that it seemed old hat before it even began. Not sure, but the movie succeeds on all fronts in my opinion.
Some people here don't seem to understand that this is based on real life. If the characters seem cold or boring to you that's just because their portrayals are based on people that exhibited that kind of personality. It's not about what you "want" out of a story, they're just showing you how past events unfolded. I don't want it twisted into a story that's only about two friends who split apart or something, I just want to hear the story as it is. So many reviews ask why it wasn't about this or that. The answer is because it's about what happened, not what you want to see. I thought this was obvious but apparently not.