The Internship gets the job done

By Kevin Hyde
June 13, 2013 

More patronizing of a large, highly influential corporation than a Chamber of Commerce … as predictable as an ’80s cover band … and about as edgy as a network television series, the new Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson film, The Internship, could have been a pretty boring piece of work. Instead, it is a consistently funny and enjoyable light comedy about the power of personal charm in a highly technological business world.

Exhibiting the same winning comedic rapport they did in The Wedding Crashers (2006), Vaughn and Owen play Billy McMahon and Nick Campbell, two 40-something wristwatch salesmen we first meet on their way to an important business meeting. Needing to re-up a big, much-needed contract, they exude a giddy false confidence, riding in a convertible and listening to their Get Psyched mix, which features the song Isn’t It Ironic, the thoroughly unironic 1990s hit by Alanis Morissette.

But the meeting does not go well, as Billy and Nick learn from the client that their own company has gone out of business without telling them. It seems nobody needs watches anymore. People have smartphones. In fact the digital world is threatening to make Billy and Nick’s entire livelihoods obsolete, their sleezy boss (John Goodman in an un-credited role) even calling them dinosaurs as he gives them, yes, watches as a parting gift. 

Their futures very much in doubt, Vaughn’s Billy inexplicably lands them an interview for a coveted internship at Google. And in a very funny scene, during which the two do their online interview from a public library, they defy the odds and talk their way into the internship. Once in, they must compete with the multitude of much younger, smarter, tech-savvy students at Google, which is depicted as a thoroughly un-corporate utopia—part amusement park, part university campus.

Billy and Nick find themselves on a team of intern misfits trying to land permanent jobs at the company. Billy, a natural leader, wears a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers t-shirt, constantly references the early-80s movie Flashdance in his inspirational speeches and can’t seem to say online … annoying his younger colleagues by saying on the line instead. In one scene, he proposes a smartphone app that is essentially Instagram, but he insists it is different and refers to it as Exchange-A-Gram.

The young cast members playing the fellow Google interns and managers do a good job hanging with the screen-eating stars Vaughn and Wilson. I especially liked the manager, Lyle, played memorably by Josh Brener with lines like, Should I ask if she wants to join the Lyle High Club? 

Vaughn, who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Jared Stern, is playing another variation of the character he introduced in Swingers (1998), the fast-talking, wisecracking force of personality who often doesn’t know what he is talking about, but it doesn’t matter. Wilson is certainly channeling the lovable (if not terribly sincere) and dopey (but certainly not stupid) charmer he played in Wedding Crashers. The two make a great comedic duo and it would be nice to see them team up again in future movies.

The film is directed by Shawn Levy, who over the past 10 years has helmed profitable remakes of The Pink Panther and Cheaper by the Dozen as well as the Night at the Museum movies and Real Steel.

The Internship could have used a few more big laughs, and the producers clearly didn’t know how adult they wanted their movie to be. The film features an extended scene at an over-the-top strip club as well as a couple of f-bombs, but still manages to maintain a PG-13 rating. But all and all, it is a pretty good time at the movie theater.

Kevin Hyde is a freelance writer who has worked as a reporter for daily and weekly newspapers, edited regional and national magazines, written on pop culture for an international newspaper as well as several local, alternative newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].

Sign up here to receive MidlandsLife weekly email magazine.