Last Monday a group of enthusiastic Varsity readers and I went along to an advanced preview of The Social Network, aka "the Facebook film".

How a movie about computer programming ever came to contain so many smooth one-liners, thumping bass tracks and booty shaking scenes, I will never know. Lauded director David Fincher has produced a racing, chic, sexy reconstruction of the Zuckerberg story; lawsuits, lost loves and all.

Structurally, the film plays out as a courtroom drama. It retells the invention and rise of Facebook from the differing perspectives of Zuckerberg, his CFO (and former best friend) Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins, whose website idea they claim spawned Facebook to begin with.

Supposedly the flashbacks were intended as homage to classic 1950s Japanese drama Rashomon. Yet meditation on the philosophical nature of truth this ain’t. Frenetic update on a done-to-death genre however, it is.

The Social Network is a teen movie. It’s American Pie-Space, or Ten Things I Hate About You (Tube). Nobody should be fooled by the creepy a cappella rendition of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ on the trailer into thinking otherwise. These are jocks and nerds, sorority girls and cool kids, all flinging around witty banter like The West Wing if it were written on a sugar high.

The pace, however, is what keeps the movie alive. Anyone expecting gritty drama or an insight into what really happened will inevitably be let down, but just so long as you know it’s OK to laugh both with and at the film, it makes for an pretty decent 90 minutes of cinema fun.

It was recently revealed that Zuckerberg himself has passed judgement on the film, currently enjoying its second week at the top of the US box office. Taking out everyone at Facebook’s California-based HQ, a staff member soon enough revealed that "he really loved all the parts he agreed with." I doubt, however, that there were all that many.

Much like Facebook itself, this film is best suited to teenagers and twentysomethings. If you fall outside these boundaries, you’re still welcome to have a go, but chances are you just won’t get it.