A quirky comedy, fairly typical of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, The Internship tells the story about two friends whose lives have reached a bit of a stale end on their way to middle age. Originally a sales team of two, Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) go around trying to sell high end watches. This unfortunately comes crashing down on them as the digital age now ascends even further, with analogue watches becoming somewhat of a poor seller. Their company goes bust without them knowing and suddenly they’re on the street, with little to no prospects at all. However Billy is quite the industrious type and goes off to try and get their lives back on track. Stuck for ideas Billy tries a Google search, as most unemployed people are likely to do, and here he has an epiphany work for Google.
It’s at this point that I think the film will resonate with a lot of young people as it’s quite common knowledge that getting a job with Google is not as simple as working for your local pet store. No, Google only takes the cream of the crop, and with thousands of applicants to choose from, to quote the film, it is a veritable ‘mental Hunger Games’ to get in the door. No surprise, once Billy and Nick make is past the awkward video interview, they get enrolled in the summer internship program. The rest of the film takes place in this setting; a hundred or so applicants all battling it out to make it past the intern stage and get a full time position.
However Billy and Nick don’t really seem to be the ‘Google’ type. They’re old, rather unfamiliar with computers and don’t fit in with the other kids. However all the interns are put into teams of six and have to do a series of tasks together on which they get assessed. Billy and Nick get stuck in the loser team, complete with a couple stock underdog characters. There’s also their main rival team, consisting of aggressively competitive and condescending interns.
It’s certainly a unique story and although a lot of the characters, the general underdog-victory story and relationships between the characters is generally quite clichéd, overall ‘The Internship’ scores big points for making a tale out of the reality that faces many many fresh graduates. It provides interesting insight into the Google world; from their headquarters in San Francisco to the work culture that has become a benchmark for innovative work environments, as well as the unique approach to day-to-day work and employee recruitment. Nick and Billy’s inability to fit in with their tech-savvy peers and their tenacity to overcome this, as well as how they help their socially awkward team members come out their shells is all quite endearing.
This is certainly a fun film and will provide some great entertainment for teens and young adults. Vaughn and Wilson make a good comedic pair and bounce off each other very well. Vaughn motor-mouths incessantly while Wilson’s cool demeanour helps him win over a work obsessed young women.
Overall Verdict: Although this film is unlikely to go down in history as a comedy great such as ‘Old School’ or ‘Wedding Crashers’, it certainly comes recommended as fun viewing and a new story that will mean something to the internet generation.
Reviewer: Kevin Van Der Ham