The Internship is a bog standard comedy at best, although to be classed a comedy, it would probably have to make you laugh at some point. The Internship did this for me in the opening 5 minutes when Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson pelt out Alanis Morissette in the car, singing at the top of their lungs next to a convertible full of ‘hot chicks’. Sadly, about ten minutes later the joke was repeated and failed to raise even a smile the second time.
However, even though I didn’t so much as whimper out a chortle for its entire 2 hour duration, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. Films like these are perfect to sling on when you’ve had a hard day at work and you just want to switch off for a couple of hours which was exactly what I was after last night. In terms of plot, think of Monster University, but instead of Mike and Sully you have Billy and Nick and instead of Scare School you have Google. The same basic principle is there. For those of you who haven’t seen Monsters University, allow me to briefly summarise.
Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) are two salesman working for a pretty rubbish independent sales company headed by John Goodman, who, was unforgivably underused throughout this film. The company they work for goes bust and after a very small amount of soul searching, Billy enrols them both on the internship programme at Google. Google, who interview them over Skype while they are sitting on plastic chairs in a children’s library asks them some stupid, wanky question about being in a blender and somehow they manage to land themselves a position on the programme. This bit was fairly hazed over but whatever, I didn’t really care.
While at Google they are instantly the outcasts in a sea of nerds and hipsters fresh out of College with a thirst for search engines. They are divided into teams and of course Billy and Nick are landed with the other three interns who nobody picked. They are set a series of challenges, the winners of the most challenges will be offered a permanent job. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the spectacularly mess up the first one, identify slightly more the second one and as they start working together as team they get stronger and start to win things. Throw in some nudity and an inspirational montage and you’ve got yourself a movie! Which is exactly what happened.
The premise has been done, the execution of it was pretty mediocre, but the film itself actually wasn’t all that bad. Rose Byrne played a vague love interest of Nick’s which was menial and kind of annoying because I actually rate her quite highly as an actress and in this she was just a token character. There was also a conversation which Billy had with his girlfriend/wife/fiancé (I honestly don’t know which) at the beginning of the film. He moved to San Francisco to start his internship and we never heard of her or saw her again. Did she die? May as well have done.
I am an absolute sucker for Owen Wilson films and his pairing with Vince Vaughn just reminds me how hilarious Wedding Crashers was. Even Will Ferrell was in this movie as a mattress salesman-come-sex pest with gigantic Arabic tattoos on his neck. It was like he was a cross between Ashley Shaeffer and Chazz Reinhold. Where’s the originality people!?
Credit where credit’s due, even though I know what was going to happen before I even pressed play, I wasn’t bored, I was entertained and isn’t that what the main purpose of a movie is? To entertain? So pour a glass of wine, crack open a beer, put your feet up, switch off and enjoy because The Internship will take you away and gently wash over you like a calm sea. Perfect Saturday night viewing.