"The Internship" Movie Review: It's Kinda Ehhh

The Internship pulls it out in the sixth or seventh inning. However, around the 5th or 6th, I could have had a V8.

What could go wrong with a story surrounding two middle-aged laid-off salesmen, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, with mediocre technology skills competing in an internship program at the best technology-driven, Fortune 500-ranked top company to work for: Google? Not much goes wrong but the first 3/4 of the film just doesn't go terribly right either.

The story's mostly set on Google's gorgeous campus, complete with employee freebies, napping pods, and a bike-sharing program. This film threatens to do for Google Inc. what ET did for Reese's Pieces; not that you didn't know Google was a stellar company but now I'm even dropping in an application. This works in the film's favor. Seeing the inner workings of such a cool place gives something for the audience to take in other than Vaughn's and Wilson's attempts to capitalize off of the rapid-fire comedic-timing they perfected in The Wedding Crashers but can't seem to make work consistently on throughout this one.

The duo hopes to ride the coattails of the much younger, socially-inept, Harry Potter-loving crew that comprises their team. The cast of the crew works, albeit with a predictable personality assessment given to each character. There's the overtly sexual but never-been-kissed Neha (Tiya Sircar), Stuart (Dylan O'Brien), the guy missing life playing on his phone and Yo-Yo Santos (Tobit Raphael), the guy who can't seem to cut the cord. But this hodgepodge of sheltered, superiority-complex-driven over-achievers is their only shot at grasping the full-time positions offered to the winning team at the end of the program. 

Of course, the team learns from Wilson and Vaughn and they become more well-rounded individuals. And let's not forget to include a hard-to-get love interest for Wilson, Dana (Rose Byrne). just to make the movie more formulaic.

This predictability and slightly over-cooked humor along with the prerequisite corny lines create that straight-to-Redbox quality found in other Vaughn creations, Dilemma for example. You kind of get the impression that you might enjoy this more from the comfort of a loveseat rather than pay $20 for a ticket and popcorn to sit in a crowded theater to watch it.

Overall, The Internship is ... palatable. Great pretense but not many surprises in the delivery. A gentle lull threatens to take it apart before the ending turns it up a notch and gives you something to smile and root for again. The over-the-top, cheesy ending really saves the audience from buyer's regret.