Review of The Social Network (2010) by Mike S — 05 Jan 2015

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes across as a computer genius and jerk in this movie about the early days of the company. He's like Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory" but without the self-awareness or the humour. The movie focuses on two lawsuits against Zuckerberg. One is launched by a couple of Harvard classmates who claim they had the Facebook idea first and hired Zuckerberg to program it, but he stole the idea and did it better. The other lawsuit is from Facebook's first CFO, who claimed he was deliberately pushed out of the company by Zuckerberg's new best friend, the self-promoting Shaun Parker, who invented Napster and mentored Facebook to stellar expansion and growth. In between legal depositions, we see flashbacks of Facebook's early days.

The film is anchored by strong performances from the entire cast. The film wisely focuses on the more dramatic business side of the company rather than on the geeky computer side. I expect some liberties have been taken for dramatic effect, so I'd be wary of treating this as history. It's more a character study of someone who encounters phenomenal success but still doesn't quite get why people still don't like him.