Academic

Is it possible to have a spoiler when the story is this well known? If you don't want to know what's in the movie, don't read this post.

The Social Network begins with a frenetic exchange between Mark Zuckerberg and his soon-to-be-former girlfriend, Rachel Something, who becomes a Rosebud for the creation of Facebook. Later in the movie, Rachel utters the memorably stupid line, "The Internet's not written in pencil, Mark. It's written in ink," but that was one of the few missteps in this script. 

While the supporting actors are terrific, this movie depends on Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg, and Eisenberg is terrific. I will leave the serious movie reviews to others (including Christine and Larry, who seem to have a good thing going at Illinois), but I wanted to note that The Social Network is a fabulous movie for lawyers, particularly transactional lawyers.

One of the main threads of the story is Zuckerberg's alleged theft of the Facebook idea from Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, which I blogged about over three years ago when it led to litigation. Another thread is Zuckerberg's conflict with Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, which involves an attempted dilution of Severin's shares. Then there is the angel investment by Peter Thiel and the distributions of shares to various other people, including Dustin Moskovitz, whose important role in developing Facebook is cheated in the film.

In the end, however, this film is only about one person. And his Idea. That Idea is at the heart of Facebook and the movie, and watching people grasp for a piece of it is what makes this movie fun.