The Internship: Mildly Inspiring Cheesefest

When I first saw Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in the trailer for the upcoming film The Internship, I thought it would be a repeat of Wedding Crashers. However, what caught my eye was the topic of the internship. Two forty-year-olds try to reinvent themselves through a Google Internship that they are barely qualified for—I was hooked by the idea. I have not seen any recent movies that directly tackle this subject.

I do not think the writers were exactly going for accuracy or realism in this optimistic comedy. Even just an internship at Google is considered to be extremely selective and prestigious, and they don’t hand out interviews to anyone. Normally internships aren’t specifically arranged to be a “mental hunger games," but this movie amusingly illustrates the struggle of proving your worth as an intern and a potential full-time employee.

As someone who has struggled to get a foot in the door and establish themselves, I could sympathize with the two protagonists and their team. Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson), two guys in their 40’s with decades of sales experience, find themselves unemployed after their company collapses. Their boss (John Goodman) mentions that sales is a defunct field, and that they are dinosaurs in an increasingly computerized economy that minimizes interpersonal relations.

Nick somehow manages to walk into another sales job selling mattresses, but Billy considers this career setback as an opportunity for them to reinvent themselves and pursue their dreams so that they can be innovators who call the shots as opposed to mere foot soldiers. Billy gets them a Skype interview for an internship at Google, which may or may not lead to a full-time job. After somehow succeeding in the interview, Billy and Nick fly to California to prove their worth.

Once they arrive Billy and Nick find themselves lumped into a group of outsiders. Lyle (Josh Brener), their awkward but friendly team leader, is practically the only one who welcomes them to Google. Nobody wants these chatty, non-tech savvy forty-year-olds on their team. But who can blame them? They’re facing the worst job market in the history of mankind.

As in many underdog movies, the protagonists overcome their serious limitations with something that even these twenty-one-year old tech geniuses don’t have nearly as much of—strong team-building and people skills that they have honed from years of sales experience. This message supports what a lot of people say about highly successful companies—that it’s not just about the ideas but about connecting people to those ideas. People can’t live without other people, it’s a fact. Coordination and teamwork is a vital component to any endeavor. This message is nothing that we haven’t seen, but The Internship at least manages to infuse a bit of optimism into a cynical world. This carpe-diem message, however trite it may sound, may resonate with some people, especially those who are figuring out their next steps.

There are some serious flaws with the story, however, that no amount of optimism can fix. After a tense day, Billy and Nick take out the kids for a fun night in the city. The sheltered kids go absolutely wild and live it up. A minute of this sequence at most would have been sufficient, but the film spends way too much time here. The party scenes felt like filler and after a while I could sense that the audience had had enough.

And the story predictably pins one of the main characters with a love interest, the only beautiful female executive in her thirties (Rose Byrne). Her character is flimsily written—as she has everything (intellect, career, and looks) except someone special. We also have the prototypical villain with the British accent (Max Minghella). He’s not especially funny or clever and butts in at the most predictable times. These bits and pieces of formula make The Internship a cheesefest. Billy and Nick of course are the most lovable and sympathetic characters—they can do no wrong, and the audience will inevitably be on their side.

With its optimism, eighties references, and the charm of the main leads, The Internship tries to appeal to both the younger and older generations. The film tries to include every sort of demographic and character type, most of which are one-dimensional and unimpressive. The movie clearly wants to renew people’s faith in upward mobility and perseverance. Although we’ve already seen underdogs overcoming obstacles, Vaughn and Wilson do make a very likable duo. They played overgrown troublemakers in Wedding Crashers, but here they make an interesting turn as two older men who’ve gained a little bit more wisdom over the years and bring these misfits together. For those who love this duo, technology, and want a lighthearted comedy for the afternoon, they might want to consider The Internship.