Right off the bat, you know what you’re getting with The Internship. The film opens with Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson) driving to an important dinner/sales meeting with a client that just have to land. To get themselves pumped up, they listen to an 18-year old Alanis Morrisette song. If that made you chuckle, then you will like The Internship, as that is the basis of the comedy. Take two “old-school guys,” in this case salesman who have for some reason or another never used any kind of technology, and throw them into the Silicon Valley mecca of all technology, Google, here hilarity ensues.
The problem is, if that joke doesn’t work for you, then The Internship is a nightmare of cliches and familiar tropes that we’ve all seen before. It is formulaic to the point of absurdity. Take cardboard cutouts of the hot nerd girl, the socially awkward teen, the tech-savvy naysayer, and the outcast-within-the-company leader and add Owen Wilson playing the same character that Owen Wilson always plays, and Vince Vaughn, playing, well, Vince Vaughn (which isn’t a bad thing, really). Tack on a night out at the hottest dance club in Northern California with copious amounts of alcohol consumption, and sprinkle with more ridiculous product placements than an advertising tradeshow, and you get this film.
When Nick and Billy are unceremoniously laid off after their company goes out of business (without them knowing, because they inexplicably don’t use technology), Billy signs them both up to be interns at Google. To give them the college requirement, these non-tech people sign up for University of Phoenix Online and even conduct an online video interview (I want to say it was Skype, but unless Google owns Skype, it was done over whatever proprietary video conferencing service Google owns. This is a pattern, as you will see).
Against competition from some of the greatest young minds in the world today, Billy and Nick are selected for the program and viola, the film becomes an hour-and-twenty minute (which is the balance of the film after the pair are laid off and their families all leave/chastise them for not growing up and taking responsibility) commercial for Google.
It’s not all bad. The Internship, as written by Vaughn, Jared Stern and director Shawn Levy, is funny and has some very funny moments. But getting past the “been here, done that” stuff to get to the funny takes patience. The jokes are all derived from the “old vs. new” theme, but it works for the most part.
Another aspect that seems to work is the social commentary that the writers make about the advance of the world’s technology. It’s rather eye opening when you realize how connected we are, and how competitive the world has become because of it.
In a film like this where two completely tech ignorant, 40-something guys get internships to the hottest tech company in the world, the most unbelievable thing in is that Owen Wilson is supposed to be the romantic leading man. I have never understood his appeal, and it’s worse here, as there is nothing remotely likeable or attractive about Wilson. And to even suggest that he could get one word out of Rose Byrne, who plays Dana, a workaholic Google executive, is asking for the impossible. Yet we are to believe that he can win her cold, corporate heart, which is bullshit. The film just completely stops when Wilson and Byrne are onscreen together. Rose Byrne is better than this, and Owen Wilson needs to stick to voicing Pixar films, because really, he looks downright pathetic trying to be the romantic lead here. I would much rather have seen Jon Favreau reunite with Vaughn and would have believed it more for Favreau to woo Byrne. Yes, even fat Favreau.
The cardboard cutouts, for lack of a better term, are all well cast, with Max Minghella playing the “villain” in the film by leading the competing group of interns (who equally are cut out of cardboard). He’s an ass-kisser and a career climber, and will stop at nothing to get his way. If he had a moustache, he would have twirled it constantly. I particularly liked Aasif Mandvi (Daily Show) as Chetty, the head of the Google Internship program. Mandvi is a good actor and given a role with some substance, he comes through.
The last thing that needs to be addressed is the sheer amount of in-your-face advertising that The Internship truly boils down to. Of course, the intern teams have to compete in challenges, and of course, the challenges all seem to highlight different aspects of Google products and features (except for one, with is a bonafide Quidditch match, which is used to highlight the nerdiness of it all). It started to get nauseating after a while. And if it wasn’t Google, it was Android, or Miller Lite. The amount of product shilling going on with The Internship was insulting.
It’s sad, as Vince Vaughn, Jared Stern and Shawn Levy had some very good jokes here, and when I laughed, I belly laughed. But in the same turn, I was grossed out by Owen Wilson trying to be something he clearly isn’t (ie. an attractive, charming man) and disgusted by the constant stream of Googliness (it is an actual word used through the film).
If this is what filmmaking is boiling down to, I truly feel sorry for the artists out there with the vision and skill to tell a visual story, as to get that story told, the price to pay is much more than simply ones’ soul. If Titanic were made today, it would be a Carnival Cruise Lines ship, and only Budweiser and Subway sandwiches would be served on it. And Owen Wilson would somehow get cast as Jack.
I weep for modern cinema.
The Internship is rated PG-13 and opens nationwide on June 7, 2013.
