The Internship

THE INTERNSHIP REVIEW

By John Wood

Have you ever gone to see a movie that was sold as a comedy but walked out realising you never laughed? It seems to be the same with all of Shawn Levy’s films, which include Date Night, Just Married and the revamped Pink Panther. Well the newest film by this comedy mind is the product placement heavy The internship.

Story created and co-penned by the film’s star Vince Vaughn, The internship tells the incredulous story of two salesmen whose business is recently bust thanks to the internet. While searching on Google for more jobs, the lead character Billy (played by Vaughn) thinks he should go work at Google, even though he has no experience. He brings Owen Wilson’s character Nick along with him, and after the worst possible webcam interview, they get offered an internship to Google for the summer.

Because Movie logic.

'LET'S JUST YELL UNTIL THEY SAY YES!'

It’s this logic that needs to be placed firmly in mind during this film that hurts the story. Nothing truly sticks and it actually seems to bad mouth the younger demographic, insults the middle aged audience and offends anyone older than 40. One would have trouble realising just who this movie is targeted at.

The film tries too hard to make the audience feel, so much so that one can almost see the director’s strings throughout the film. Random love interest? Check (made worse by the fact that it’s Aussie Rose Byrne). A villain? Check and played by Max Minghella, known for playing the same role in The Social Network. Also a last minute reveal of a true good guy? Check… like on three separate occasions. But the biggest violation of the clichés is the terrible ‘ragtag’ group that Nick and Billy are surrounded with they are simply paper thin stereotypes that the writers see a physical trait for and bad mouths them.

It's strange, I still can't decide if this game really is better or worse then how it looks on screen.

The audience could feel more love and hope for these characters if it all didn’t feel so selfish for all the leads. Culminating in an ending that actually hurts EVERYONE that is trying to get a job at Google and makes the world completely unbelievable.

It could have been worse, they could have set it at Bing headquarters, but if that was the case at least we might have got a laugh out of it.

RATING: FIZZLE