From bedroom to boardroom

Rating: 7/10 (26 August 2013)

Steve Jobs didn't invent the graphical user interface. But he did produce the first implementation of one in which enough of the details were right for it to be popular. And Bill Gates (who makes a cameo appearance in this film) did not necessarily produce the world's best computer operating system. But his system became the first standard, and the advantages of using a standard system meant that once Microsoft was big, it was destined to become huge. Both of these factors (technical refinement and network effects) help explain the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. And while it's interesting to observe the fine lines that makes one person a billionaire whereas another goes bankrupt, it also perhaps tells us that the detailed biographies of those who happen to end up on top are maybe not that interesting or important. One might make an exception for Jobs who showed an uncanny knack throughout his career for shaping sector-defining products. But is Zuckerberg, whose social networking software happened to win out over the competition, really worth the attention? This movie, describing the story of Facebook's foundation, is perhaps most interesting because its participants, most of whom are presented badly here, are still alive (and indeed, young): I don't quite know how the script was steered around the lawyers, or how true it is. It's certainly quite fun to watch a tale of almost-schoolboy capitalists, hopelessly out of their depth when their business venture turns out to be worth billions (although this part of the story would probably work as well without the crazy numbers); and when the concept is so nebulous, the business so fluid, it's easy to understand the lawsuits which led to many people claiming that they really owned the company: in some senses, the business made itself. What does grate is the sense of self-assurance, and self-entitlement shown by the class of Harvard, all of whom are depicted as both arrogant and brilliant, when their most obvious merits are merely their own well-connectedness. Again, this may be true to life, but you won't find any socialistic moralising here. Instead, there's a snappy (though glib) script and a surprisingly breathless journey from the bedroom to the boardroom. It's a fun film if you like this sort of thing, but less insightful than it thinks.