The Internship
The Internship is basically a 2-hour long ad for Google, even though it was only partially shot at Google HQ in Mountain View, CA - an Atlanta soundstage was built for some of the other scenes. I'm sure Google has never had any trouble finding job applicants but after this movie, they might notice a surge of new applications: their HQ at Mountain View, at least in the film, has everything from dry cleaning to all free food to sleep pods. I was excited to see this movie because it's the first time that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have teamed up again together since Wedding Crashers, one of my top ten favorite funny movies, and they definitely still have chemistry together; however, the movie could have been funnier overall.
Watch salesmen Nick (Wilson) and Billy (Vaughn) find out from a customer that their company is closing, and they confront their boss (John Goodman), who tells them that they will have a hard time finding new jobs because they are "relics" without modern-day skill sets. Nick takes a job with his sister's boyfriend (Will Ferrell, in a cameo role) at a mattress store, but soon Billy comes to him with an irresistible opportunity: he scored them an interview to intern at Google, which might lead to a real job there at the end of the summer. Nick already hates working at the mattress store, so he quits his job and he and Billy have an interview over webcam with the Google interviewers the next day. Because you have to be a college student, Billy signs them both up at University of Phoenix online, and he and Nick somehow manage to convince Google to give them a chance.
When they move to Mountain View and start their internship, they notice they are a LOT older than the college students who make up about 95% of the Nooglers (New Googlers), and they must prove that they have the skillset and the intellect to have a chance at getting a job there.
This movie was a lot nerdier than I thought it would be and I loved all of the nerdy parts. In one scene, the Nooglers play Quidditch (from Harry Potter), and Nick and Billy have NO idea how to play it. There's a ton of computer jargon that's thrown around, like C++ and HTML 5, and the movie is definitely geared towards younger people - at one point, one of the Noogler teams come across another team and want to gloat about something, and they tell them that they saw them checked in on Foursquare which is how they knew where they were. The moral of the film is actually that you should start living outside the "cyberworld," though, which is a good moral for today's society.
Yes, see this film, but it has my lowest Yes rating: 3 stars. Parts of the movie were definitely hilarious, but other parts tried hard to be and were not. I was pleased to see Max Minghella as an arrogant Noogler, who is always putting down Wilson and Vaughn's character and their team, as well as Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) as Wilson's love interest and Jessica Szohr (Gossip Girl) as someone who a team leader has a crush on, and who also teaches dance at Google. In real life, I don't think Wilson and Vaughn would have even been invited to interview at Google - at one point, I wanted to work there and their job process is extremely tough - but since this is a film, we can overlook that. See The Internship if you're looking for a light comedy, but it's not worth more than matinee price; there are funnier movies in theaters right now.
The Internship is in theaters today, June 7th, and is rated PG-13 with a runtime of 109 minutes. 3 stars out of 5.
