FILMMAKER Jason Reitman casts a dispassionate eye over how social media influences life in the developed countries (thank heaven he forbore from including their use by bad guys in current Middle Eastern conflicts).

Adam Sandler plays a husband and father who uses internet porn as a surrogate for late-night connubiality. Rosemarie DeWitt plays his wife who visits a dating website that leads her to lie about where she really is when he thinks she is visiting her sister.

Reitman’s examination of the role of social networking goes beyond marital infidelity. The major part of the film goes among teenagers, a minefield if ever there was one. The film’s treatment of teenager issues is mainly sexuality-related, not drugs.

The film’s structure is more a series of linked vignettes than a cohesive plot. Rated R in the US, it’s commendably frank without being salacious. The Internet Movie Database reports that after opening on October 1, it was withdrawn from exhibition within a month. I suspect that those good folk who grow filthy rich from providing social networking facilities might have applied pressure on exhibitors.

The IMDb quotes Reitman saying the filmmakers spent “the same amount of budget on creating the digital world as … the physical one. People know what Facebook looks like better than they do a hotel lobby, you stare at it all day, so it had to be convincing”. That’s worth thinking about and quite a compelling reason for watching the film.

At Palace Electric and Capitol 6