Writer: Lai Swee Wei

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Watch this if you liked: “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”

David Fincher ("The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button") delivers a well-written drama that chronicles the founding of Facebook, where creator Mark Zuckerberg ends up dealing with two simultaneous lawsuits - one of them comes from his best mate. Adapted from Ben Mezrich's non-fiction book The Accidental Billionaires, "The Social Network" however does not centre its attention on the human greed or selfishness; it is essentially about how a loner is desperately trying to find his own connection. Bear in mind that as friendships are being formed, enemies are also made.

After an unexpected breakup with his girlfriend and some humorous drunk blogging, computer genius Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) bitterly decides to create a site to rank the sex appeal of Harvard co-eds. Utilising his computer skills, he downloads student's pictures from the database and gathers them into a website which he calls facemash.com. When visitors are presented with two photos side by side, they are to select which they find sexier. Needless to say, it got so appealing that it garnered tens of thousands of hits in a matter of hours, causing Harvard's computer network to crash. Thus it inspired Zuckerberg along with his two programmer mates and best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) to form "The Facebook", an early plan of what would be known as one of the most popular social networking website today. It also involves helpful Napster co founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and a pair of good-looking Harvard twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who claims that Zuckerberg stole their website idea.

The story is driven by conversations made during legal battles which lead to various flashbacks as Zuckerberg tries to defend "his creation" from the Winklevoss twins and Saverin. "The Social Network" is well executed and humour is clear in the characters' dialogues, which keeps the pace of the talky movie going.

Dubbed as "the other Michael Cera", Eisenberg undoubtedly has the charms of an adorable nerd and takes a step up with this iconic figure. Already tapped as the new Spider-Man in the reboot, British actor Andrew Garfield exudes the determination of character well, while Timberlake manages to part his celebrity image and embrace his role convincingly as an intelligent businessman who knows the trick of the trades.

"The Social Network" proves to be an intelligent movie with a witty script. Watch this to discover the complications behind this billion dollar idea and laugh over relatable scenarios of a Facebook user such as the "relationship status" change.

Cinema Online, 10 November 2010