It’s been 8 years since Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson caused widespread outbreaks of uncontrolled laughter in Wedding Crashers, and now the duo has re-teamed for The Internship. Though not quite as sharply funny as their first collaboration, it does generally hit the comedy mark fairly well, and as a light and breezy way to pass two hours, you could do a heck of a lot worse.
When they suddenly find themselves unemployed, Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) decide to jump on the dot-com train and audition for an interview at Google. Their out-of-the-box answers during the interview secure them a spot (natch), and they quickly find themselves surrounded by nerd-tastic 20-somethings at the company’s Northern California playground-campus. After being told that only 5% of the interns will actually earn a paying job at Google, the interns split into teams for a series of challenges; winner gets the paycheck.
Following the same “lovable band of misfits” formula as movies like Revenge of the Nerds, The Bad News Bears, and, well, Pirates! Band of Misfits, The Internship doesn’t offer much of anything that isn’t telegraphed from pretty much the opening scene, so it falls on the cast (particularly Wilson and Vaughn) to keep it above water.
Thankfully they succeed. Vaughn and Wilson haven’t missed a beat since they crashed all those weddings, and their collective comic timing is still spot-on.
It’s easy to see why the film is getting ripped as being a two-hour infomercial for Google; everything from the campus-wide free food to the colorful decor and casual dress is highlighted, but the company is so unique (and so pervasive in today’s already) that the concept doesn’t leave the same bad taste as, say, Marty McFly chugging a Pepsi. On a side note, I can only imagine this film will do the same thing for Google prospects as Top Gun did for aspiring fighter pilots. Seriously– unless you have Bing! on your business card, why wouldn’t you want to work there?
Director Shawn Levy (The Night at the Museum flicks) keeps things rolling along pretty well, and though 15-20 minutes could have easily been trimmed, the finished product is still light years better than most attempts at comedy so far this year (I’m looking at you, Hangover Part III and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.)
Written by Vaughn and Jared Stern (who’s recovered nicely from the disaster that was last year’s The Watch), The Internship actually has a decent number of laugh-worthy moments, including a handful of fun cameos. There is, however, plenty of syrupy-sweet schlock, too, as the underdogs win the day, the nerds get the girls, the bad guy gets his comeuppance, etc.
No, it’s not as instantly memorable or quotable as Wedding Crashers, but The Internship does prove one thing– Vaughn and Wilson are still the right guys for the job.
4/5 stars