“The Internship” is a big puppy dog of a film — one that, in its way, is just so lovable, good-natured and cuddly that you can almost forgive the bad things it does.
The comedy, which reunites Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, who first buddied up in the 2005 hit “The Wedding Crashers,” has generated an inordinate amount of advance publicity because of its setting in the world of Google. The Internet giant not only allowed some of the filming to be done on its Mountain View campus, but it also provided technical assistance for some scenes involving coding and app creation, gave advice on staging and dialogue and contributed to the movie’s closing credits.
As one last stamp of approval, Google co-founder Sergey Brin turns up in two different cameos.
What Google gets in return is a big ol’ sloppy, wet kiss. “The Social Network” this ain’t. By the end of the film, you may almost believe that Google is a corporate Shangri-La where the greatest things ever are created for the betterment of all mankind.
That is what it looks like to a couple of modern-day Willie Lomans — Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) — who suddenly find themselves out of work after years of successfully peddling high-end watches. It’s a crushing blow. For one thing, they find out that their company has gone belly-up, and not from their bosses but from a customer over dinner. Billy gets dumped by his longtime girlfriend, and his house is foreclosed. Nick has to take a
soul-draining job selling mattresses for his sister’s slimy boyfriend (an uncredited Will Ferrell).
That’s when Billy decides they have only one option: get a job at Google — even though they live in an analog world with no digital skills and, at the moment, the company isn’t hiring. The solution: apply for an internship program that guarantees jobs to its top achievers. Somehow, these two aging underachievers wheedle their way into the class after a screening interview on Google Hangout. The scene is one of the funniest in the movie as the clueless salesmen vamp their way through the interviewers’ questions.
Amazingly — or not, since there wouldn’t be a film otherwise — Billy and Nick get accepted and head off to Silicon Valley, where they quickly realize just how out of their element they are at Google. The other interns, all years younger, immediately recognize them as digital illiterates who are stuck, culturally, somewhere around 1985. A big clue: Billy persists in evoking the 1983 movie “Flashdance” when making what he thinks are inspirational speeches, a cultural reference that draws mostly blank stares from the other interns.
While director Shawn Levy clearly makes every effort to get the details of Google and its way of life right, there’s only a surface resemblance to the company’s real work world. For one thing, the major dramatic device is a series of challenges that will determine which team of interns will get the coveted jobs — a contest that doesn’t happen in the real world. For another, one of the challenges has the teams manning phone lines to provide tech support. Seriously? Good luck getting a Google person on the phone in real life.
Billy and Nick end up, of course, on a team of rejects overseen by a mentor/manager (Josh Brener) who seems barely out of high school. They look like sure losers, particularly when put up against a team led by an aggressive, ambitious and thoroughly nasty intern (Max Minghella).
You can guess where all this is going. The real-life experiences of Billy and Nick help carry the day. The older guys learn from the kids, and vice versa. Good triumphs over evil. And everybody gets Google-ly.
But somehow much — if certainly not all — of the film works. Levy largely avoids the cynical and the crude, which is refreshing. Some bits are legitimately funny. The cast, notably Aasif Mandvi as the leader of the internship program, do just fine.
It’s all just enough to cover flaws such as the occasional misconceived scene, some one-dimensional characters and a running time that is about 20 minutes too long. In the end, you’ll probably like “The Internship,” even if you don’t (and shouldn’t) love it.
