Gripping and Illuminating

Rating: 8/10 (10 September 2013)

THE SOCIAL NETWORK is very well-filmed, and though the dialogue is sometimes a little TOO ultra-witty, its fine acting helps to bring about an immediate realism. It focuses mainly on the legal complications and conundrums, i.e., lawsuits by Zuckerberg's fellow students at Harvard who played big roles in spawning and developing the whole idea of Facebook. I never would have dreamed it possible that someone could make a legal drama set mostly in depositions rather than trials work so well, but this film accomplishes just that--the fact that it's a true story certainly helps. It gives a well-rounded and convincing picture of the various entanglements Facebook went through in its early stages, also effectively showing how just about any large corporation-to-be experiences similar issues. While Zuckerberg is portrayed as less-than-likable, his precocity is hard to ignore, and THE SOCIAL NETWORK gives a very non-editorialized portrayal of him and all the other players here. There's also a lot of Ivy League-level girl-chasing, partying, and so forth, which, again, is shown so realistically that it's quite engrossing.