The social network' doesn't live up to hype

There has been much debate over the facts in The Social Network, the new movie about the early days of Facebook. But one thing is certain: Both the film and the company it depicts have lots of hype.

Facebook has been valued somewhere north of $30 billion - that's right, $30 billion - and the movie, which opens Friday, has already garnered a lot of praise from critics. One hundred percent of the 35 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes at the time this writing gave The Social Network a thumbs up - one review even compared it to Citizen Kane. Sure, we've seen our share of technology bubbles, but for the first time we may be seeing a technology movie bubble.

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The problem is The Social Network tries to be a documentary and also wildly entertaining, and fails at both. On one level, the movie gives a pseudo-biographical look at founder Mark Zuckerberg and his cadre of geeks during Facebook's first year. We're taken through the tent-pole events of those early days: Zuckerberg's first act of notoriety at Harvard starting the controversial Facebook predecessor Facemash, the Winklevoss twins suing Zuckerberg over rights to the idea for Facebook and a falling out with cofounder Eduardo Saverin.

But there's a lot of "pseudo" in this movie because it's based on The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, an unauthorized, fictionalized book by Ben Mezrich. One of the main motivations of Zuckerberg for starting Facebook, according to the movie, was to pick up girls. And one of his reasons for expanding Facebook so aggressively was to prove himself to a girl who dumps him.

Image: The Social Network

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