Starting Over... At 40?

The Internship

Ever since movies have been made, there has been a constant within the comedy genre… buddy comedies. Ranging from the films of Laurel and Hardy to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the buddy comedy is a great way to show us what great comedic actors can do when paired together. For example, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon teamed up for Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. Both very distinguished comedic actors by themselves, but together they played off each other magnificently to create one of the greatest comedies of all time. However, there are some buddy comedies that were not as fantastic, like The Internship.

Meet Nick and Billy. They are sales representatives for a small firm that sells watches and are pretty good at it. However, when they learn that the company they work for is going out of business, Nick and Billy must now find a new career path. Enter Google. Billy convinces Nick to take an internship with the online giant to start their new lives. Nevertheless, they soon learn that they may be way over their heads.

Yes, the concept and plot of this film is that simple. There is nothing complex about this film and I think that is the one positive thing. This movie, for me, is another 2013 film that is not downright bad and it is not good either. The movie is very light hearted and never takes itself too seriously (maybe for obvious reasons) and it does have some good moments. I just think that if the director was to replace the two leads, the movie might have done a lot better. On the flip side of this, Vince Vaughn wrote the script and most likely wrote it for himself and Owen Wilson. Therefore, I do not think the director had a choice on the actors. The supporting cast of the film has a lot of fresh faces including Lyle, played by Josh Brener, who you might have seen in the Samsung Galaxy commercials. He holds his own this film and may have proven himself for some other comedic roles. In addition, there is the main protagonist, Graham, played by Max Minghella, who comes across as a self-righteous jerk, very well.

Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Real Steel) is in the director’s chair. Now I have come to like Levy of late because he chose to step out of his box with Real Steel. Most comedic directors do not step out of that box because I assume that comedy is easier to direct than other genres. This film proves it because, as mentioned before, there really is not anything of substance to this film. Almost felt like Levy just followed 

Vaughn and Wilson with a camera and let these two actors “do their thing”. Again, nothing bad about this, just nothing great about it either.

If you seriously would like to see a comedy with these two actors, refer back to The Wedding Crashers; trust me it is almost the same movie. Of course most Vince Vaughn movies are the same movie (see rant).

The Verdict: Watch on Cable.