Let me say this: Founding my own website was nowhere near this interesting.

Let me also say this: David Fincher's The Social Network is pretty comfortably the best film hitting screens in one of the strongest release weeks of the year.

In case you've been hiding under a rock, this is the big screen, unauthorized bio-pic about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from the director of Seven, Benjamin Button and Zodiac with a score by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. Not surprising at all is that Zuckerberg has banned any advertisements for the film from appearing on his social networking behemoth. Somewhat more surprising is that the film is actually fairly sympathetic to the youngest billionaire in the world.

Jesse Eisenberg is perfectly cast as Zuckerberg, the actor's more standoffish qualities feeding perfectly into his performance as the awkward computer genius. The film picks up with Zuckerberg being dumped by his girlfriend for being -- it must be said -- a douche, a situation that leads to Zuckerberg drunkenly rambling on his blog about the evils of women while also hacking the Harvard servers to create a sort of Hot Or Not clone to compare Harvard's women using images pilfered from the master servers. It's a move that brought down disciplinary action but also planted the first seeds of what would eventually become the biggest social networking site in the world while also embroiling Zuckerberg in a series of lawsuits, one of which would come from his closest - and arguably only - friend.

And this is why the film succeeds: Because it's not actually about Facebook. It's about Zuckerberg and, by extension, the meteoric rise to power and influence of a young man who was completely unequipped for the success he was suddenly faced with. The Social Network is the classic American story, one about the success and failure of capitalism, one that confirms that the American Dream is real and success can be achieved by anyone while also cautioning that such success can destroy you.

This being a Fincher film, the technical work is all astounding -- though the bells and whistles are of a much more restrained variety, a la Zodiac.  Fincher maintains the tension by cutting back and forth between timelines, dropping scenes of the 'good days' when it was all hope and excitement directly against scenes of the bitter lawsuits and depositions being delivered by former friends. But more than the bells and whistles, Fincher proves - again - that he is increasingly becoming a very, very good actors' director. The entire cast here is sterling. Eisenberg is bang-on in the lead, with Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake - yes, that Justin Timberlake - anchoring a perfectly cast support block.

Frankly, I was skeptical going into this one, wondering how on earth a movie about the creation of a website could be at all a dynamic or cinematic experience. But I was wrong. The Social Network is one of Fincher's most mature, compelling and entertaining works.