More than 500 million people have Facebook accounts, so it seems the new movie “The Social Network” would have a built-in audience.
But even if you don’t do Facebook, you will probably still enjoy what I consider to be a great movie.
The film focuses on the story behind the creation of facebook.com. I would not consider this a “based-on-a true-story” film as much as a “loosely-based-on-a-true-story-but-greatly-dramatized-for-Hollywood” film.
The film tells the story of Mark Zuckerburg and his inspiration for the Facebook website. It follows the story from Zuckerburg, the site’s founder, sitting in his dorm room in college writing the code for the site, to moving its offices to California and growing it into the multi-billion dollar website it is today.
The plot is not really about the website itself, but the confrontation between Zuckerburg and his colleagues. In the film, Zuckerburg is presenting his case in two separate lawsuits, and describes how the website came to be and how it grew.
The film made an estimated $23 million on its opening weekend, despite much criticism about its factuality.
While a Facebook account is not needed to appreciate the film, users would understand some jokes and references in the movie that others would not. Anybody can relate to the drama that the characters go through in this film.
The film is 120 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for language, sexual content and drug and alcohol usage.