Movie Review – The Internship

It’s been a while since our last movie review. These tend not to be as popular articles as our DBZ related ones, but they look good when applying for advance screening passes so we should do one every once in a while. Speaking of which, JustSaiyan.com recently got to attend a screening of The Internship starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

Basic premise of the movie is that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson lose their regular sales jobs and, unable to secure other non-entry level jobs, somehow talk their way into Google’s internship program where they must compete against more tech savvy applicants half their age in order to secure full-time work. I’ll be up front and say that I can straight up relate to this premise, having lost past jobs and struggling through some entry-level stuff until I finally accepted an internship at a start-up internet tech company (check it out). At almost 30-years of age, I was also the oldest person in the company at the time I was brought on. So based on just the premise alone, I wanted to check this out.

You put “Bleach TCG Playtester” on your resume and see what kind of job offers you get.

I thought the film was funny for the most part, had a lot of laughs and a lot of heart towards the end. It’s the classic underdog type story, of which Vaughn is no stranger to. In fact, you really aren’t going into a lot of new territory and the plot/formula actually follows the same plot from Dodgeball pretty closely: Vince Vaughn (and Owen Wilson) join a mismatched team of underdogs from different backgrounds to compete for a prize to ultimately save their way of life. Except instead of playing dodgeball to save a gym, they are coding to land a job. Both movies even have the exact same third act plot twist. Despite that, I’m not saying that this is a bad movie because we’ve seen it before, just don’t expect anything new or groundbreaking.

Both Vaughn and Wilson are extremely likable in their roles, which is good because the movie doesn’t expand on many characters besides them. They have witty dialogue and banter with each other, which keeps the movie interesting and humorous. There’s also a good smattering of cameos from other comedians like Will Ferrell, John Goodman and Rob Riggle. Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show also has a good turn as the manager of the internship program, and I loved any scene with him in it. Max Minghella is okay as the “rival/villain”, but the character never really rises to the level that Ben Stiller did in Dodgeball.

The one major downside of the movie were the other members of Vaughn and Wilson’s Google team. With the exception of the Asian character who was little more than a stereotype caricature (all I have to say is that he’s an overachieving Asian and you can probably accurately picture the character in your head), I found the other characters to be interesting and very likable but underutilized. They all have personality quirks in dealing with other people, but they are really only addressed in the “party montage” scene and then quickly resolved by the end of the film. None of them really get as much screen time as Vaughn and Wilson, which is a shame since these characters drop more of the nerd/pop culture jokes (seriously, descriptions of hentai in a mainstream movie) and you get only glimpses into what could’ve been some characters as interesting as the two leads.

Sometimes, the film does feel like a Google commercial, but fortunately it’s not every scene. I actually considered the alternative and thought to myself “What if it was just a knock-off fictional company they used like Goggle or something instead?” Say that out loud though and think about how cheap that sounds. Product placement be damned, just having it be a real company makes it a little more palatable.

Overall, as I said at the top its a fun movie with a lot of laughs and a lot of heart. An excellent date movie and something worth a watch if you can catch a matinee showing during the week or worth a rental if you can wait a few months.

Later, BroZ!