The comedy duo of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have their work cut out for them each time they re-team on the big screen. Eight years later and still no actual follow-up in sight to Crashers, The Internship plays like a light hearted step-son with Vaughn and Wilson doing what they excel at. But here they play off each other as new characters who fall within the range of why we love what they typically do. For all intents and purposes, that always isn't in theory a bad thing, but in this case you want a little more push and shove than the restraint we are shown in this outing.
As a pair of washed up watch salesmen Nick (Wilson) and Billy (Vaughn), they learn the hard way from their boss (John Goodman) they have little going for them when their company goes belly up. The sad news is that the increasingly tech savy world prefers to get their time of day from their smart phones instead f devices strapped to their wrists.
Via a Google search, imagine that, the duo fast talk their way to the Google campus for an lowely internship (and the film is all Google glad handing from that point forward). Once there they must mingle and compete with the eager Instagram generation of college kids for the desperate chance of permanent employment within the conglomerate. They are considered aged outcasts and saddled with a group of geek misfits (Dylan O’Brien, Josh Brener, and Tobit Raphael). It's off to do team battle of both tech and physical tasks against both their intern brethren and bigger threat of their pompous British nemesis played by Max Minghella.
And so begins another paint by numbers plotted comedy we have unfortunately seen before from these funny fellows. Nick and Billy suffer through the fish out of water story, but have none of the expected mean streak to give them any advantage. They are for all intents and purposes outmatched. How do the older dudes communicate with their younger team mates? Try using '80s movie metaphors, talking out problems ad nausuem rather than actually working them out, or taking their sheltered asses out for an all night bender of club hopping.
The underdog angle was executed better in Old School, as these kids aren't inherently funny characters, just augmented stereotypes. Wilson and Vaughn's better Wedding Crashers personas had the huge advantage of an R-rating which kept the humor edgy and below the belt. At best The Internship comes off as a family friendly quasi-sequel to Wedding Crashers, from which the first 15 minutes of the movie could be easily be a clean deleted scene from.
There some attempts that work regarding the generation gap humor. The in-studio 20th Century Fox synergy allows some extended X-Men humor at the expense of a professor in a wheelchair, and the obvious befuddlement presented when Billy and Nick participate a game of terra firma-based Quidditch. But the majority of the film is watching the team inevitably bond as they try to win the proverbial Google intern golden goose.
The film over stays its welcome clocking in at nearly 2 hours. There is a trend to bloat comedies past a tight 90 minutes towards a generous 120 or more (Superbad, Wedding Crashers, Knocked Up and Old School are also all guilty as charged) and so suffer with a lagging dark third act turn to set up the inevitable last minute acts of redemption.
Rose Byrne, Will Farrell, John Goodman, Rob Riggle and Gossip Girl's Jessica Szohr put in time in supporting roles or cameos of varying degrees. While many of these familiar faces help break up the scenes, it merely adds to the over extended feel of the film.
The Internship is nonetheless harmless fun and plays it too safe on many levels, just squeezing by on the expected laughs which mainly come courtesy of Team Wilson and Vaughn, whose slight variations on their big screen personas effortless come across as second nature. The film has its heart in the right place, taking a bunch of misfits to the school of cool on campus. I think keeping it at PG-13 hindered its prospects, but may help expand its audience.
The Internship opens in theaters on June 7th.
REVIEW RATING: ★★½☆☆☆
Director: Shawn Levy
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, Max Minghella, Josh Gad, Aasif Mandvi, Jessica Szohr
Screenwriters: Vince Vaughn and Jared Stern
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 119 minutes
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