**
½ out of 5
119
minutes
Rated
PG-13 for sexuality, some crude humor, partying and language
Twentieth
Century Fox Film Corporation
Article
first published as Movie
Review: The Internship on Blogcritics.
I
can only imagine how difficult it must be to try and capture lightning in a
bottle twice. Now imagine trying to do something like that in Hollywood. Eight
years ago, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson paired up to deliver one of the biggest
comedies of all time with Wedding Crashers. About $285 million worldwide
later, it is inevitable that the two are back together to bring more yuks to
the big screen. Unfortunately, this time they brought along director Shawn Levy
who knows all too well how to make a bad movie — see Real Steal, Night
at the Museum 2, The Pink Panther, Cheaper by the Dozen. His
only tolerable films are the first Night at the Museum and Date Night.
If you feel a little weary at all after reading those titles, then you may want
to steer clear of his latest misfire, The Internship.
Billy
(Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) are suffering from a case of Live Free or Die
Hard — they’re a Timex watch in a digital world; literally. They sell
watches for a living and have just found out from the sale they’re trying to
close that the business has gone under. Their boss (John Goodman) scoots them
out the door because no one wears watches anymore; everyone just checks the
time on their phones. (The irony here being that the colleague sitting next to
me kept checking his watch for us as the movie slogged along.) Nick takes up
his sister’s offer to go to work for her boyfriend (Will Ferrell) but he’s only
there a few hours before Billy walks in and rescues him with an interview for
an internship at Google.
Faking
their way through the interview, they wind up at what appears to be the most
laid back work facility this side of Pixar Animation Studios. Nick and Billy
think they’ve got it made, but soon learn that the two know even less about
computer skills than they thought. Taken under the wing of Lile (Josh Brener),
along with outcasts Yo-Yo (Tobit Raphael), Stewart (Dylan O’Brien), and Naya
(Tiya Sircar), they must make their way through the internship program
together; even if Nick and Billy can’t stop dragging the team down. There are
also subplots involving an arch nemesis (Max Minghella) and a love interest for
Nick (Rose Byrne), but with the film clocking in at a whopping two hours — at
least a half hour too long — you start to lose track of what’s going on and
just wait for the movie to end.
While
The Internship does manage to squeeze out at least a few laughs, the
biggest one it got from me was coincidental. Over the weekend, some friends
discussed the infamous lisp of Barcelona, and I couldn’t help but laugh out
loud when Vince Vaughn shouts out “Barthalona” at the beginning. With Vaughn
listed as co-writer and producer, it’s no wonder he’s allowed to run wild
through the movie, but just as Naya tells him at one point, “You’re just saying
a lot of words really fast that don’t mean anything.” The same is sadly true of
the whole endeavor. There’s also a barrage of ’80s
references that go way over the heads of the kids, especially considering how
much the movie emphasizes that Billy and Nick are from some kind of stone age.
The
supporting youngsters are very likable; Wilson and Byrne have at least a
tiny bit of chemistry, but their scenes together are few and far between. Had
they been working with a director who knows how to pull everything together (or
had gotten back together with Wedding Crashers’ David Dobkin), maybe
they could have pulled off the reunion we were hoping for. Being stunted with a
PG-13 rating certainly doesn’t help either because fans of their last union
will be looking for something far raunchier and definitely way funnier. In the
end, The Internship just drags along, hitting every college comedy beat
along the way, but without any jokes.
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