Every now and then someone will convince me to go to a movie. I almost always regret it.
Instead of staying home and watching bold, clever shows like Game of Thrones that are written by actual writers, I spend two hours of my life viewing the unoriginal concoction of a marketing specialist who thinks he has discovered the magic formula for a crowd pleasing box office hit.
I was therefore not expecting great things from The Internship, but I hoped it would be a light, entertaining way to spend two hours, especially since Wedding Crashers, also featuring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, had pleasantly surprised me.
The premise of The Internship sounded funny enough: Two unemployed guys in their forties decide to compete for a job at Google, even though they are vying against young candidates who are exceptionally bright and qualified. They are put on a team with smart kids to compete against other teams for the job.
However, a funny premise does not a funny movie make. The amusing situation was not enough to prop up the limping dialogue, unreal characters, and stale theme.
But my main problem with the movie was not that it was not funny. As a light drama, the premise had potential. My main problem was that the movie felt disingenuous.
The characters are dropped onto the stage still-born and are danced around like puppets to the tune of a formulaic plot. The protagonists are droll stock characters, buffoons who act silly and make a lot of noise. Although they are all id, they are not nearly as funny, lovable, or radical as the movie wants them to be.
I tried to identify instead with the kids who worked at Google. However, as nerds, they are not only stereotypes; they are all the same person. They are, every one of them, humorless, emotionally flat, and incapable of clever dialogue.
Some weak efforts were made to distinguish them: the Asian kid is dominated by an overbearing mom; the team leader tries too hard to act cool; one employee, a sexy and driven bombshell with glasses, is privately tortured that she has spent too much time on her work, and yearns for the Owen Wilson character to rescue her with his animal charms.
Like her, none of the “nerds” seem to have experienced a moment of joy in their entire lives, until the wacky duo shows up, takes them out and shows them how to really live. Naturally, this involves getting drunk at a strip bar because the more people enjoy Harry Potter, the less likely they are to have heard of alcohol or naked people.
In one scene that follows, the Vince Vaughn character prompts a young and serious intern to admit that he has just had the best night of his entire life. The movie reason for his reluctance is that he is too uptight for honesty, but I imagined that it was the script writers, not Vince Vaughn, extorting this confession.
Time and again, I had the feeling that the characters would have had something different to say if only given the chance; instead, every character is pushed inexorably and unconvincingly toward personal growth.
“I never expected to like you,” the glasses-wearing girl employee says to Owen Wilson with moist eyes as she leads him toward her bedroom. I expected it from the beginning but again, the change of heart felt forced.
In another part of the movie, the team is challenged to sell Google services to a skeptical businessman. Without the bumbling main characters, the nerds are lost. They can only speak numbers and computer jargon, but when Owen Wilson and his buddy enter, everything changes. They “have heart” and manage to persuade the business owner that Google can transform his business. I wondered: Does high intelligence exclude the ability to sell?
Which brings us to the theme, which is that a lovable, bumbling duo with mediocre talents can succeed wildly in a skill driven business, even though they have no skills, and bring life, inspiration, and mental health to joyless nerds who secretly long to be like everyone else.
The crowd-pandering conclusion seems to be that intelligent people are severely unhappy, have no clue about how to have fun, and need to be rescued from themselves.
To fuel their character growth, a bully is thrown in almost as an afterthought, and I did not even realize his role until halfway through the movie when he began to fire unconvincing taunts at the main characters.
Naturally the starring team wins and leaves the bully seething, and the main characters are exalted for embodying the true “Google spirit.” Every conflict, no matter how trifling, is neatly wrapped up at the end.
The movie might be interesting to someone curious about the inner workings of Google, and I admit that at the beginning the movie drew a few laughs from me.
But overall the movie was embarrassing to watch. It demonstrates what can happen when script writers drape their story around a crude “winning” formula and a crowd pleasing theme, and expect the audience members to fall into line and respond just as their programming instructs them.
However, I was unable and unwilling to become another movie pawn that, like the characters, would feel a certain way because the movie told me to.
I am a real nerd, and I don’t work that way.