The Internship

Cast of Characters:

Billy McMahon - Vince Vaughn

Nick Campbell - Owen Wilson

Dana - Rose Byrne

Graham Hawtrey - Max Minghella

Director - Shawn Levy

Screenplay - Vince Vaughn & Jared Stern

Rated PG-13 for sexuality, some crude humor, partying and language

      In 2005, both Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn starred together in the hilarious comedy Wedding Crashers, which proved to be a mega-hit both critically and financially. Fast forward eight years later, Wilson and Vaughn have teamed up again in The Internship.

      Billy McMahon (Vince Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Owen Wilson) are salesmen that have been given a reality check upon finding out that the company they work for has been closed down. Being that in today's business world everything is computerized, the fact that they're both essentially door to door salesmen makes them - as their boss delicately puts it - dinosaurs. Now out of work, Nick finds himself working a dead end job at his sister's boyfriend's mattress company, and Billy - still unemployed - is threatened with both home foreclosure and his girlfriend leaving him. It appears he may have found a light at the end of the tunnel when he's able to land what he refers to as "an interview that may lead to an internship that may possibly end up leading to a job" at Google for both him and Nick.

      While at Google, both Billy and Nick are like fish out of water, which is an understatement. These two seem like they could barely sign into Hotmail let alone be even adequate at coding or debugging. They're immediately snubbed by the snobbish, hotshot intern Graham Hawtrey (Max Minghella), and windup being teamed with what everyone refers to as the "leftovers". The overall goal of each team is to win as many series of challenges as they can. The winning team will be given a job at Google, but only one team can win.

      This is clearly a formulaic and by the books comedy. We get the textbook group of kids within Vaughn and Wilson's team: the quirky nerd leader, the intelligent, attractive girl with self-esteem issues, the quiet introvert, and the smart ass loner who thinks he's too good for the team he's in. We know the token snob's team is gonna lose and Billy and Nick's team will win by the end of the film, and we know single man Nick's gonna get the girl as well. All things considered though, Wedding Crashers was formulaic too, and damn it if I didn't laugh as much as I did here. I've said it before. If you're gonna be a formulaic horror film, then at least scare me to death. Likewise, if you're gonna be a formulaic comedy, you can still succeed by making me laugh as much as possible. Like in Wedding Crashers, both Vaughn and Wilson prove once again they make a dynamic comic duo, yet although they do display a great deal of comic chemistry together, I found the more effective comic moments were actually between either of them with the college intern teammates. A majority of the humor takes advantage of the generation rift between the pre-internet dominated era Vaughn and Wilson and the iPhone obsessed, technology addicted kids. There's also a hilarious middle segment involving a Quidditch match (From the "Harry Potter" series) challenge with Vaughn and Wilson being completely overwhelmed by not just the game, but also the Potter lingo thrown at them by their team leader Lyle when he explains the rules. In particular, Wilson's reaction to when the "Golden Snitch" shows up is priceless. Comedies like this always run the risk of showing all the funny parts in the trailer. Many films have fallen prey to that trap; however, that's not the case here.

      It's no surprise Max Minghella's (son of the late, great Oscar winning director Anthony Minghella) character is a little bit too snobbish to where it's at times a bit cardboard cutout. It's the same type of character that we've seen a number of times before. Bradley Cooper in Wedding Crashers is an appropriate example. That being said, this film set out to make me laugh, and I did. Vaughn - following last year's God awful The Watch - delivers his trademark ranting with the typical zest and quickness he does best. The beautiful Rose Byrne (who up until this film, I had no idea was Australian), despite playing the cliche "love interest", displays some effective chemistry with Owen Wilson. Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show has a few solid scenes as the head of the internship, and there's also some fine cameo appearances from John Goodman, Will Ferrell, and B.J. Novak. Finally, it seems like forever since I've seen anything with Wilson in it worth my time and money. I give The Internship a B+ (★★★½).