It is a story about the founders of Facebook, which is the most popular social networking website. The source material for the movie is the book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich, whose previous non-fiction work became “21.”

The movie opens in the fall of 2003. Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg from “Solitary Man,” “Adventureland” and “The Squid and the Whale”), a computer nerd with a genius IQ, is on a date at a bar with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Erica Albright (relatively unknown Rooney Mara recently picked to play Lisbeth Salander in the American remake of “The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo”). She takes offense to the things coming out of his mouth and breaks off their relationship over a beer.

A hurt, upset and slightly inebriated Zuckerberg comes up with an idea to take his mind off Erica. He creates a cool website where the user can judge the hotness of female Harvard undergrads. It generates 22,000 hits in two hours and ultimately crashes the entire Harvard network. Zuckerberg is put on academic probation for six months for this breach of security.

Zuckerberg’s next programming idea is to put everything online from the college experience. It involves pictures and profiles of the entire Harvard student body. It is akin to your own personal billboard with the ability to invite or not invite friends into your private sub-account. Zuckerberg shares his creative vision with his only friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, recently chosen to be Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the 2012 reboot) and asks him to furnish $1,000 of seed money.

This nonstop talkfest is filled with smart, sizzling dialogue. Most of the movie involves Zuckerberg interfacing with his computer or answering questions at a deposition. He is being sued in two different lawsuits. One involves intellectual property theft where twin brothers from a prestigious fraternity claim Zuckerberg stole their original idea. The other case brought by Saverin involves the dilution of his stock in the company.

Sean Parker (Grammy Award-winning pop star-turned-actor Justin Timberlake), the entrepreneurial co-founder of the music-sharing service Napster, uses his influence to jump on the bandwagon and gets involved with this freakishly addictive website. Zuckerberg looks up to the slightly older and charismatic Parker, because he has prior experience with a similarly desirable Internet destination.

The movie takes a non-linear approach with the play-by-play of events springing from the legal discovery stage with the litigants and their attorneys sitting around a large conference table. None of the characters in this very cut-and-dried drama are very likable. Zuckerberg comes across as arrogant, lacking a sense of humor and mildly autistic. The fascination comes from Zuckerberg becoming the youngest billionaire in the world with a company currently valued at $25 billion.

This cerebral exercise of how an outsider seeking acceptance expands his individual fantasy into cyberspace will appeal primarily to a target audience between the ages of 16 to 30. It has a high-brow, Ivy League flavor mentioning social distinctions among students living in ultra-exclusive clubs and rooming houses.

Non-Facebook users will feel like dinosaurs and find it frustrating being out of touch with this communication phenomenon and the jargon that goes with it. The movie may serve to bridge the huge Grand Canyon-like chasm between baby boomers on one side and Gen X and Y’ers on the other, stimulating meaningful discussions about values, viewpoints and ideas.

Review By:
Keith Cohen "The Movie Guy"