The Internship Review

Generic in execution but enjoyable in practice

Full, spoiler-free review by Isaac Handelman

Taking 2005’s Wedding Crashers as a precedent, few would have suspected Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s new buddy comedy, The Internship, would contain an ounce of sweetness or goodwill. It’s surprising to find that Internship is one of the more lighthearted, uplifting, just-plain-happy comedies to come to theaters in years. It will not please all -- some bizarre tonal shifts, aggravating use of narrative cliches, and lack of much true laugh-out-loud material will see to that -- but The Internship provides a harmless good time, and an experience that’s refreshing when compared to the increasingly mean-spirited comedies releasing in today’s cinematic landscape.

However, to say that mean spirit is entirely lacking in The Internship would be a lie. The film follows best friends Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson). After being let go from their sales positions at a faltering watch company led by zany CEO Sammy (John Goodman), the duo decides to drop everything and take a shot applying for an internship at Google, which they, of course, obtain. The Google summer internship is, as Nick so eloquently puts it, “a mental hunger games with a bunch of genius kids for only a handful of jobs.” And so begin the antics of The Internship, as Billy and Nick try their best to match wits with their fellow interns, whose age difference and technological skills put them at an obvious advantage compared to their younger counterparts. Unfortunately, though, at least for the first half of the film, The Internship sidesteps much characterization of Billy or Nick, favoring instead to make them the only two decent people on campus. Every other intern we meet comes off as an arrogant jerk -- at least at first.

What better way to make a happy movie even happier than copter beanies?

But despite the strange choice to have every human being encountered by the comedic pair be almost unbearably nasty, the issue fizzles over the course of the film’s duration, and while it’s present, it never quite manages to get in the way of the joyous, carefree tone of The Internship, which is a very good thing. A few exceptions exist to the film’s feel-good nature, with the highlight being one especially out-of-left-field, raunchy scene in a strip club. However, the jarring tonal inconsistency doesn’t last long, and ultimately brings forth a few good laughs, even if they’re obtained using the crass, crude humor that The Internship is usually so good at avoiding.

The pre-established chemistry of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson ensures that almost all of The Internship is, at the very least, amusing. However, hearty laugh-out-loud moments are few and far between in the film, which may disappoint viewers hoping for a comedy that will provide them with nonstop hysteria. The film opts instead to induce somewhat frequent giggles and simultaneously ensure that its viewers are left smiling through most of the proceedings. Still, I was ultimately left wanting by the film’s disappointingly low level of the side-splitting comedy its two stars have before proven to be so capable of displaying. Perhaps the filmmakers realized this, and tried to remedy it by including a few jokes that simply try too hard, attempting in vain to squeeze laughs out of the cringe-worthy “huh huh look at us we’re nerds” premise. Suffice to say, these attempts fail miserably. Thankfully, they’re in short supply.

The Internship takes one notably strange turn for the raunchy in this strip club scene.

In terms of narrative, The Internship does not bring much new to the table, hitting all the major plot points you’d expect out of it -- there’s a pointless love interest, a sudden departure, and more than one eleventh-hour victory. Some of these cliched plot elements are simply annoyances, but others can be downright aggravating, as the film spends an exorbitant amount of time resolving conflicts whose outcomes are painfully obvious. During one sequence in particular, I was begging for the film to stop stalling and get back on track. And yet it insists on pausing all that’s interesting for far too long while dwelling on these divergences.

Some will throw accusations at The Internship for being a shameless free advertisement for Google. Whether those accusations are true or false is anyone’s guess, but there’s no denying that the film makes Google out to be an absolutely wonderful way to work. However, the promotion, whether intentional or not, strengthens the positive tone of the film and makes the entire experience all the more happy-go-lucky and entertaining which, in my mind, excuses any devious intentions on the part of the film’s creators.

The Internship is not a stellar comedy. Its narrative is cliched, its jokes can be grating, and its tone can be inconsistent. However, walking out of the theater, I wasn’t focused on any of these missteps. Instead, I was left feeling a little bit happier than when I walked in. That may not be the mark of a great film, but it is the mark of a sporadically effective -- and surprisingly refreshing -- comedy.