Like Blackberry, The Social Network and lots more, this movie takes a (slightly fictionalised) look at a digital era success story and the personalities and bad behaviour that went into its formation.

That was the first reason to watch it, and the second is the scrumptious Lily James, who recently did something similar from recent history (and just as enjoyably) in Pam and Tommy.

She plays Whitney Wolfe, the America entrepreneur who built and currently still runs Bumble.com and who was instrumental in the early success of Tinder.

We meet her when she's new to LA, conning her way into a tech industry shindig on the Santa Monica pier to try to recruit rich benefactors to her idea connecting internet users with orphanages in the third world who need funds, an idea that makes everyone's eyes glaze over despite how worthy it is.

Temporarily accepting defeat, she gets talking to a guy while they wait for their cars who turns out to be Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), who runs a co-working space where several initiatives including Tinder will be born. He's much more interested in Cardify, an online rewards card system, and it's how Whitney comes to work for him, posing as an associate at a business lunch with two restaurateurs he's trying to get on board.

When she turns on the charm and wins them over he immediately hires her as the CMO of his app-building collective, and a dating app that's easier to use than most (just swiping left or right on photos rather than exhaustive profile surveys) is her brainchild, soon eclipsing every other product under their roof including Cardify and putting Sean, Whitney and their coworkers on the fast track to internet superstardom.

But when Sean brings his best friend Justin (Jackson White) in to work at the company, he and Whitney take a shine to each other that can only end in disaster. When he becomes controlling and starts to take credit that's rightly hers, it's only the pointy end of the stick of a lot of bad behaviour, and Whitney, who can't take it anymore, breaks up with him, knowing full well they have to work together but hoping it'll be okay.

She (along with us) quickly learns some of the hardest lessons of the tech mogul era. Justin becomes abusive, sending her countless hateful texts and barely hiding talking about her behind her back at work, and when she complains to Jack, she's repeatedly told to just let him cool down and get over it (ie not that he's harassing and stalking her and affecting her work and confidence).

It goes too far after a party where rival dating site mogul European Andrey (Dan Stevens) tries to poach Whitney and Justin confronts her like an unhinged jealous boyfriend. Whitney tries to put her foot down with Jack and the hardest lesson hits her like a ton of bricks – it's bros before ho's all the way, and given the choice between doing the right thing (and upholding employment law) and protecting his best friend, Sean turns on her.

Whitney is out of work and, as anyone who's crossed one of the heroes of the move-fast-and-break-things era knows – especially if they're female, the story emerges and her former employer paints her as embittered shrew who did far less than she claims to make Tinder a success. She also becomes the target of a hateful social media backlash, ending up locked in her house, terrified and having panic attacks, not understanding how her life has gone so wrong.

From her experience with the inherent sexism of the internet era, Whitney takes Andrey up on his former offer. She coaxes female friends at Tinder to come and work with her, people who've likewise been the subject of gendered mistreatment (in one of the film's most incisive ideas, a mousy coworker who's an accomplished computer scientist spends most of her days deleting dick pics).

Bumble is born and starts to take flight, but an eleventh hour reveal that Andrey, who both we and Whitney assumed was far more female friendly, might actually be no better than Rad, Justin and the rest of her former colleagues.

It gives Whitney her come-to-Jesus moment; keep defending rich men doing bad things or call out and condemn the entire industry on its misogyny. Her entire focus at Bumble has been for women to have a safe space to exist online, and she starts to feel that if she doesn't address the accusations against Andrey during a big forthcoming launch event she'll be condoning them, something she knows deep down she's done by ignoring the slings and arrows her gender has suffered in the industry in various forms to fit in.

As far as I know, the relationship with the co-worker was invented for the movie – the real Whitney only made it her mission after the harassment she saw elsewhere. But it's a very effective device to humanise what so many women go through not just in modern tech but the workplace in general.

In fact the treatment she endures at the hands of the former boyfriend is a very effective comment about how, no matter how much we like to think we civilise and change because of technology, we don't. Plenty of men (seldom women) are shit when their egos are hurt, and society tends to vindicate them and find a reason to blame the woman involved.

Other than that the tone is actually a perfect match for James herself – especially in this role. It's bubbly and full of personality, reminding me a little bit of the few episodes of Supergirl (the one with Melissa Benoist) I watched.

As always, don't take it as a history lesson. Scriptwriters Bill Parker, Rachel Lee Goldenberg (who also directs) and Kim Caramele has very deftly woven some very worthy themes about equality, feminism and respect into Wolfe's true story, and the incandescent James (who I'd watch reading a dictionary for 90 minutes) fills it with life.