If you Google Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, you’ll find that 2005’s “Wedding Crashers” is still one of the most popular films of their careers. Since that film came out audiences have wanted more of these guys together on screen. After eight years, they re-collaborated (yes, that is a word) for “The Internship”.
Vaughn and Wilson play Billy and Nick. They’re two watch salesmen who learn that their boss (played by John Goodman) is shutting down the company. Suddenly without jobs, Billy and Nick are desperate to find work. Nick takes a job at his brother-in-law’s mattress store, but isn’t happy there. And Billy’s girlfriend leaves him because he can’t pay the bills. So, to try something new, Billy applies him and Nick for a summer internship with Google.
Once accepted, they head to Google headquarters in San Francisco (the company must’ve LOVED having its logo in practically every scene) and they quickly learn what we know long before the set-up wraps-up: that these two adults, who know very little about computers, are not going to fit in with the other interns, who, of course, are computer savvy college students. All the interns are broken-up into teams and Nick and Billy end-up in a group with other misfits. Then everyone learns that the team with the highest score at the end of the summer – based on a series of challenges – will become full-time Google employees. So Billy, Nick and the rest of their gang have to overcome the obstacles and beat the odds in order to win their new jobs.
After dealing with boxing robots in “Real Steel” and statues that came to life in the “Night at the Museum” movies, director Shawn
Levy returns to a straight comedy. But, unfortunately, “The Internship” becomes as predictable as a robot and, at times, is as lifeless as actual statues. The set-up showed a lot of promise. The comic potential of having Vaughn and Wilson in the Google environment was big. And there’s a surprise cameo about 15 minutes in that provides hope of possible hilarity to come.
But things then start to go downhill quickly. Vaughn is credited for the story and co-wrote the
screenplay. The big mistake he and fellow screenwriter Jared Stern make is structuring things around the “competition” idea. This is so
basic and so over-done. We know the outcome before it even begins. What could have helped was some editing. Too many of the scenes go on WAY too long. This would have been OK if these scenes were actually funny. Problem is, Vaughn and Wilson rambling-on throughout predictable and often very dated situations (there’s a long “Harry Potter” Quidditch match that will just not end) only makes things worse.
At times, prominently in one section toward the middle, “The Internship” pushes its PG-13 envelope. This will likely please fans of “Wedding Crashers”, but much of it is in bad taste.
However, there are a few bright spots: Rose Byrne (“Bridesmaids”, TV’s “Damages”) brings a nice change of pace to the obligatory love interest role as workaholic Dana, who Nick spots on his first day at Google and immediately falls for. And there are a few laughs here and there (I chuckled when the FOX Sports theme song pops up), and humorous supporting appearances by Josh Gad (“1600 Penn”), comedian Rob Riggle and the surprise cameo I mentioned earlier.
“The Internship” is rated PG-13 for adult language and content. And I must say this is a tough film not to like: A solid cast in a setting with plenty of comic potential. But if you ever need to search for this movie on Google enter the phrase “no originality or big laughs” and it’ll appear at the top of the page.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “The Internship” gets a disappointing C.