You wouldn’t have to search too hard for a better comedy than this.
There are often complaints when product placement is too blatant, too obvious; distracting you from the story of the movie you’re watching. Google would be well within their rights to object to the fact that someone has placed subtle, almost imperceptible, hints of characters and a narrative within The Internship, their one hundred and nineteen-minute long advert.
There’s something horribly lazy and cynical about “The Internship”. It’s a tired, uninspired and formulaic piece of corporate propaganda masquerading as a comedy. There’s something very, very creepy in the way it fetishizes Google and its corporate culture and it’s somehow worse that they didn’t have to pay anything for the privilege of a feature length commercial. Granted, for much of the movie, Google’s corporate motto does seem to be ‘we only hire douchebags’ but still…
Given he wrote, produced and starred in it, this is presumably a bit of a passion project for Vince Vaughan who teams up again with Owen Wilson to try to recapture the chemistry of “The Wedding Crashers”. It’s hard to see what he is actually passionate about, though, and for the first forty-five minutes it’s a grindingly dull rehash of their fast-paced, talking over each other, underachievers routine. Once they actually arrive at Google HQ, it then becomes a by-the-numbers college romp with a ragtag bunch of misfits having to band together to overcome the arrogant other teams and their strict, disapproving boss. Along the way, the kids learn some valuable life lessons and there’s an unconvincing romance with Rose Byrne thrown in to give Owen Wilson’s character something to do.
The shame here is that buried really deep under layers and layers of tired banter and clichéd set pieces is the seed of an interesting idea, and a comedy exploring how youth and technological savvy can benefit and learn from age, life experience and wisdom could really work well. Unfortunately, “The Internship” eschews this more challenging and thought-provoking option and instead decides to lean almost entirely on the assumed charms of its lead actors to get it over the finish line.
It’s a credit to Vaughan and Wilson that by the hour mark, where all seemed lost (and I seriously considered stopping the disc and watching something else), they managed to claw back my attention bit by bit so that I stayed on board to the end. No mean feat, especially as neither of them are firing on all cylinders here. Vaughan is firmly within his wiseguy with a conscience comfort zone here while Owen Wilson, in particular, seems jaded and disinterested with the role, his usual sparky screen presence rendered dull and lifeless.
The ending is trite and utterly predictable and by then it’s too late anyway: I was just glad it was over. It’s a good job Google is the world’s leading search engine because everyone concerned with this mess really needs to find a better material for their talents.
