The Internship: Full Review

The Internship- (June 7^th, 2013): PG-13

Distributor: 20^th Century Fox

Opening Weekend Box Office: #4 with $17,325,307

Domestic Box Office Gross to-date: $38,365,000

Gross Revenue: $43,465,000

Production Budget: $58 million

Director: Shawn Levy

I’m going to venture a guess and argue that one of the main marketing challenges associated with The Internship involved alerting audiences to the fact that Fox’s newest comedy was NOT a sequel to 2005’s Wedding Crashers.  But given a bland and uninformative theatrical release poster featuring a tagline like “Crashing the System,” can you really blame anyone who might have made the erroneous association?  It seemed like the success or failure of The Internship was highly contingent on the inherent draw of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, neither of whom (let’s be honest with ourselves) represent established A-list juggernauts…talk about a risky venture in a summer filled with so many competing and well-established franchises.  The trailers in and of themselves offered a few chuckle-worthy jokes, and you have to appreciate the efforts of radio stations like KROQ launching special summer internships as cross-promotions, but nearly every critic and industry analyst agreed that a film looking under the “veil” of Google was better suited to 2005 and currently represents little more than a blatant product placement commercial.  Given my own celebrity fandom, it isn’t all that surprising to reveal that I wasn’t thrilled with the critical or commercial potential of The Internship, especially when going head-to-head with a perfectly-time horror entry; but there was a small glimmer of hope that the misguided comedy would offer just enough lighthearted laughs to be passable.

The Internship starts by introducing audiences to successful watch salesmen and longtime friends Billy McMahon (Vince Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Owen Wilson), both of whom are blindsided when their boss, Sammy Boscoe (John Goodman), announces the obsolete nature of their work and the closure of the company.  Fumbling for work in the face of minimal relevant work experience, Billy and Nick con their way into an interview for an internship at Google, earning acceptance into a program thanks to their unorthodox and out-of-the-box interview answers.  Under the close scrutiny of program head, Mr. Chetty (Aasif Mandvi), and in the face of ridicule and sabotage from competing perfectionist Graham Hawtrey (Max Minghella), Billy and Nick engage in a summer full of team-based challenges, where the winning team will be guaranteed jobs with Google.  Though it takes some time to gain traction, Billy and Nick eventually earn the trust of their team of eccentric “rejects” – leader Lyle (Josh Brener), neurotic Yo-Yo (Tobit Raphael), cynical Stuart (Dylan O’Brien), and oddball Neha (Tiya Sircar) – and put forth some truly brilliant work…and Nick even manages to build a relationship with the gorgeous workaholic executive, Dana (Rose Byrne).  As the competition draws to a close, Billy and Nick must rally to ensure that they don’t fall into old habits and endanger the chances of the young savants who have placed their faith in the fast-talking underdogs.

As surprising as it is to admit, I highly enjoyed The Internship, and that fact is largely due to the characters generated by the lighthearted script, which allows for the type of personas and situations that finally strengthen the personalities of the top billers.  It is no secret that Vince Vaughn plays virtually the EXACT same character in each of his films, and in placing the charismatic goofball in a setting that allows him to play-off the stereotypical tech nerds that are wound way too tight, a genuinely funny dynamic is created.  In fact, while Wilson and Vaughn are fun to watch together, the true source of entertainment within this narrative involves watching the veterans interacting with a younger generation of actors, each of whom demonstrates considerable potential for a future in comedy…the scene where the intern team travels to a strip club in order to loosen up is brilliant and sets the stage for the best jokes of the film.  Add-in the novelty of an inside-look of the inner-workings of the Google campus and the surprisingly heartfelt and overtly encouraging tone of the narrative’s third act, and The Internship comes across as fun and inspiring for even the most cynical of moviegoer.  Unfortunately, even though I consider The Internship to be one of best comedy films that either Vaughn or Wilson has put together, its standing within the overall genre is marred by missteps that felt wedged-in and largely unnecessary to the overall project.

Like I indicated earlier, The Internship’s quality experiences a significant boost once our protagonists hit the Google campus, but the efforts taken to arrive at that setting and the subsequent dependence on that dynamic highlights some significant weaknesses in the script.  For the first half hour of the running time, this comedy comes across as a massive failure reeking of desperation and undue confidence in the inherent appeal of Wilson and Vaughn, so even though things do get better, the positive upshift still draws attention to the slow start.  And I cannot forget the few additions to the film that, though novel, really do nothing to add to depth or overall story progression; I can see the logic in the Will Ferrell and Rob Riggle cameos, but the romance subplot between Rose Byrne and Owen Wilson, though sweet, could easily have been left on the cutting room floor.  And even though I don’t often fall in-league with other critics, I have to admit that the overall focus of the film feels out-of-date…six or seven years ago, I could have bought Vaughn and Wilson’s characters being so far removed from technology, but in today’s world, the blatant adoration of the multi-billion dollar company comes across as far too obvious an example of product placement.  So there you have it, even though The Internship doesn’t make any mind-numbing mistakes, lack of any true innovation in subject matter or storytelling relegates this film as something that is probably best experienced after its initial theatrical run.

Back in early May, I predicted that I micro-budget horror offering like The Purge would hit at the perfect time to draw audiences in need of some cinematic scares, so that Universal property’s debut in first place wasn’t all that surprising, but I still thought that The Internship should have represented some respectable competition.  Unfortunately, in the face of other blockbusters with considerable staying power, Fox’s comedy was only able to generate a fourth place debut, which is rather pathetic when you consider the recognizable cast.  It looks like potential audiences couldn’t get past holding a cynical view of the blatant Google tie-in; while other valued demographics were likely thrown-off by the PG-13 rating (everyone knows it is getting harder and harder to generate laughs without an R designation from the MPAA).  After two weeks in theaters, The Internship hasn’t come anywhere close to recovering its modest $58 million budget, so Fox is definite going to lose some money…you would think that Google could have sprung to cover its own promotion and minimized production costs.  The Internship certainly wasn’t awful and was far better than I originally expected, but in the face of so many other powerhouse offerings, it is likely that this comedy will represent little more than a significant “Miss” in a summer full of “Hits.”

    

Overall Recommendation: Medium