Film Review: The Internship

Posted in Film, Reviews
By Sam Bathe on 3 Jul 2013

The Internship has been described as a 120-minute advert for Google, and while the repeated product placement proves to be incredibly jarring, such criticism is a little harsh. After watching the movie it didn’t particularly affect my opinion of the tech company or make me want to work there.

The story picks up as a couple of old fashioned salesmen, Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson), lose their jobs in the ailing watch business. Stuck for what to do next, Billy registers the duo for the internship programme at Google, and against all odds they get in.

Against the tech whizz-kids they’re working alongside, Nick and Billy obviously stick out like a sore thumb, that’s the whole point of plot, but you guessed it, against all odds they form a team with a motley crew of similar oddballs and push for the chance to win the Internship Games prize of full time employment.

With a love interest thrown in for good measure, you’d struggle to write a more stereotypical script for what is initially a strong concept, but you can help but imagine the film would have been much stronger if they’d chosen to go with a fictional tech company, or in today’s era, a trendy start-up.

But the saving grace is that the film is actually funny. The comedy isn’t a million miles away from Wilson and Vaughn’s last comedy some time ago, Wedding Crashers, and it feels like it was written that long ago too, but the film hits a decent quota of laughs, with little chuckles to keep you going throughout. Vaughn and Wilson are definitely starting to get a little boring in this sort of loveable rogue role, but for now, they still pull it off.

The Internship is very lazily directed by Shawn Levy and the generic shots give the movie the feel of a corporate video at times. Generally, though, it&# 8217;s a positive experience, and even if every mention of Google only serves to hold the film back, as Hollywood comedies go, it does a fairly decent job of keeping you entertained.

2/5

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