The Internship (2013)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Two recently laid-off men in their 40s try to make it as interns at a successful Internet company where their managers are in their 20s.
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In what might be viewed as an attempt to show geek cred, it gamely references numerous touchstones: Harry Potter (there's a game of quidditch), X-Men, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and so forth.
At least then we might have escaped a plethora of racial, social and ethnic stereotypes, not to mention pop culture references to Harry Potter, “X-Men” (which these clowns say they never heard of) and Jennifer Beals’ legwarmers that are about as current as the Eisenhower administration.
The age-versus-youth theme, however, is as subtle as a meat cleaver: Are we supposed to buy that Billy and Nick are unfamiliar with “X-Men” and “Harry Potter,” or that Billy can’t remember that the term is “online,” not “on the line”?
There are certainly myriad issues however, from the ceaseless, not particularly funny pop cultural references (“Star Wars,” “Big Bang Theory,” “Harry Potter,” “X-Men”), to the down-to-the-second predictable structure, to the excruciating use of pop music.
Another distracting contradiction finds Vaughn and Wilson completely unaware of contemporary popular culture, since multiple scenes depend on them not knowing that “Professor Charles Xavier” is a fictional X-Men character.
A big clue: Billy persists in evoking the 1983 movie “Flashdance” when making what he thinks are inspirational speeches, a cultural reference that draws mostly blank stares from the other interns.
This comedy bumbles out of the gate with a screenplay given to frequent dumbness and obsessions with 1980s pop culture references, mostly to do with Jennifer Beals' onstage shower in "Flashdance."
And he does seem stuck in 1983, so obsessed is he with the film ‘‘Flashdance.’’
Unlike the raunchy Wedding Crashers, it's rated PG-13 instead of R, it avoids the strain of mean-spiritedness that's in vogue in modern comedy, and its leads are now more comfortable making jokes about 1953's Stalag 17 and 1983's Flashdance than anything from the brave new world of 2013.
After all, how heartless do you need to be to lay down cash for the opportunity to smugly look down upon two fading stars groveling for the last crumbs of stardom in a predatory movie that feeds off the picked-over bones of “Flashdance” and Alanis Morissette?
In what might be viewed as an attempt to show geek cred, it gamely references numerous touchstones: Harry Potter (there's a game of quidditch), X-Men, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and so forth.
There are certainly myriad issues however, from the ceaseless, not particularly funny pop cultural references (“Star Wars,” “Big Bang Theory,” “Harry Potter,” “X-Men”), to the down-to-the-second predictable structure, to the excruciating use of pop music.
“Flash Dance,” “Star Wars” and “The Fly” are recurring memes throughout.
80s references are stupid… unless they’re about “Star Wars,” and suddenly the early-twentysomethings claim credit for that as well.
On a campus where “Star Wars” and Harry Potter are the appropriate cultural touchstones, Billy’s inclined to give old school pep talks about “that little steel-town girl, Ally” (“Flashdance”) and reassure a troubled colleague, “I’m your Bill Holden in ‘Stalag 17.”
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, hoping no doubt to recap their “Wedding Crashers” vibe, reteam in “The Internship.”
It’s as if Google resolved to pay Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson a few million dollars to reprise their Wedding Crashers characters for a corporate video about salesmen who teach the company’s whiz kids a thing or two, then decided the line separating advertising and entertainment was slippery enough that Google might as well turn that conceit into a full-length film.
It may reunite “Wedding Crashers” stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, with a setup that mirrors that of “Old School,” the adults-in-college laugh riot that starred Vaughn and Wilson’s brother Luke, but “The Internship” is more of a standard fish-out-of-water comedy, while also owing something of a debt to the snobs vs. slobs comedies of the 1980s.
Ever since Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson charmed us with their buddy comedy antics in Wedding Crashers, people have been wondering if these two stars would ever reunite again to rekindle the hilarious fire that once was.
The inclusion of several laugh-out-loud funny interludes perpetuates the movie's engaging vibe, and it does, in the movie's early stages, seem as though The Internship is going to top Wedding Crashers, Vaughn and Wilson's first comedic pairing, in terms of entertainment value.
…eight years on from Wedding Crashers , the pair successfully rekindle their irascible shtick.
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Tossed into a dead-end job market, without any real prospects, they talk their way into an internship on the sprawling, buzzy Silicon Valley campus of Google, where they’re pitted against a bunch of brainiac 20-year-olds who live and breathe technology and don’t get any of the pair’s pathetically ancient pop-culture references (Stalag 17, anyone?).
Unlike the raunchy Wedding Crashers, it's rated PG-13 instead of R, it avoids the strain of mean-spiritedness that's in vogue in modern comedy, and its leads are now more comfortable making jokes about 1953's Stalag 17 and 1983's Flashdance than anything from the brave new world of 2013.
The best Billy offers as rejoinders are “Stalag 17” and “Flashdance” quips, and his reaction to a real-life Golden Snitch in a Quidditch game is amusingly dumbfounded.
In an attempt to borrow from the “Revenge of the Nerds” school, the script delivers a number of stereotypes led by the elitist Graham (Max Minghella).
…comedy of the last 30 years, from Animal House to Revenge of the Nerds to Vaughn’s own Old School .
Thus, we have a sort of “Wedding Crashers” meets “Revenge of the Nerds” with computer-idiots Nick and Billy teaching their techno-savvy team members such life lessons as how to keep their spirits up in the face of adversity and how to get a PG-13 lap dance.
But Vaughn has put them into a really creaky underdog tale that's part Animal House, part Revenge of the Nerds, and a large part "Homer Goes to College" —The Simpsons episode where Homer has to hang out with a bunch of smart, nerdy college kids and teaches them how to have some fun.
Closer in spirit to Meatballs or Revenge of the Nerds than the frosty cool of The Social Network, there is at least a fragment of an interesting idea here.
So “Revenge of the Nerds” meets “Meatballs” in a color-by-numbers comedy that’s neither fast nor furious enough.
Fittingly for a movie stuffed with ’80s pop-culture references (including Vaughn’s frequent invocations of “ Flashdance ” as an inspirational touchstone), “The Internship” often feels like a time-travel or body-switching comedy a la “Big” and “Peggy Sue Got Married,” but where nothing supernatural is responsible for stranding Los Angeles watch salesmen Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) in a world they no longer recognize.
In Nick and Billy’s snobs-versus-snobs clash, “The Internship” embeds reliable, if not groundbreaking, ’80s-movie code from “Back to School” and “Real Genius” (complete with its own nod to Lazlo, the bookish recluse from “Genius”).
…underdog comedy redesigned for a new era of corporate synthesis and brand integration, complete with such fixtures as the mysterious geek who figures prominently in the climax (think Real Genius), a sneering villain with an effete British accent, and the nerdy, anxious Asian kid driven to self-harm out of anxiety over disappointing his demanding mother.
Think Bill Murray’s “Stripes” or Tom Hanks’ “Volunteers” meets the nerds vs. the super nerds of “Real Genius.”
I am talking specifically of "Revenge of the Nerds," "Back to School," and (especially) "Real Genius."
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Not since the odd 1988 boy-meets-alien flop “Mac and Me” has there been a film as egregiously built around product placement as “The Internship.”
Shawn Levy’s sentimental comedy of self-improvement through corporate devotion is every bit as aggressive and shameless in its advertising integration as previous nadirs like the notorious E.T. knockoff/McDonald’s commercial Mac And Me, and Foodfight!
In Nick and Billy’s snobs-versus-snobs clash, “The Internship” embeds reliable, if not groundbreaking, ’80s-movie code from “Back to School” and “Real Genius” (complete with its own nod to Lazlo, the bookish recluse from “Genius”).