A couple of days after watching The Social Network, the new film about Facebook, I was visiting two senior people at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, just off the Stanford campus. "How did you like the movie?" I asked, knowing that they had bussed the whole company down to see it the day it was released. "I found it rather dry," said one, and "a little slow". "Rather boring," said the other. Do I detect a company line emerging here? Facebook says that a film about Facebook is, er, boring.

Well, don't you believe it. The Social Network is a hoot, and definitely worth seeing. Just don't imagine it's a serious film about social networking, the internet, and the possibilities for good and ill they open up. This is an entertainment about Harvard, American lawyers, and being 19. It exaggerates gloriously, hilariously.

Continue reading Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian...

overlay image