The Internship

TAKE 1: One Man’s Opinion

…because film is largely subjective

           

by Frederick William Springer III

 

The Internship

Release Date:  7 June 2013                                                                   Runtime:  119 Minutes              

Review Date:  11 August 2013                                                              Rating:  5 (of 6)

 

     While not as good as Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's previous collaboration (Wedding Crashers), The Internship is fun.  If it counts for anything, I left the theater with a smile on my face (which is why I'm giving it a 5 rather than the 4.5 I originally intended to bestow).

     Still not recovered from a crashing economy, I thought the basic concept would resonate more than it did, the story a little slow to suck you in.   To paraphrase a character that was called cynical, college grads of today don't really have the "American Dream" to aspire to because even with fancy diplomas no one is hiring when you graduate.  I can certainly relate and attest to that--I immediately got my MBA after my BA so I'd have the tools to obtain a job in which I'd be able to support myself and a future family comfortably.  That was 2005 and I've still yet to be hired other than for sporadic, part-time, dead-end, minimum wage jobs with no viable income.

     Even with a bunch of slightly oddball characters, including dinosaurs Vaughn (who also wrote and produced) and Wilson themselves, the audience begins to root and cheer them on because they have heart.  And they all need jobs.  Vaughn and Wilson have been sacked from their sales job they've had for as long as most of their teammates are old, their teammates finishing up college and needing a place to work when they do.  Only the winning team will find themselves with job offers when the internship is complete.

 

     How true to the Google internship experience this is, I don't know (I suppose I could Google it) but it's good to see a giant such as Google can poke fun at itself.  As for the work environment, I'd say that it's pretty on the ball since I had read an article about it years ago (not to mention that there was a whole list for the "Google Support Team" in the end credits, probably fact checking every little detail), which had made me want to apply myself.   Unfortunately, it's mostly tech jobs.  I took Computer Science in high school and it wasn't something I excelled in or enjoyed.  But that's okay, while I haven't been to Mountain View, I did visit San Francisco and it's not a place I'd want to live anyway.

     Jobs outside the tech realm and in an area lining up with my own background are few and far between at Google, unless I want to move to Africa, Europe, Russia, India or South America where they are apparently available in abundance.  Go cynicism!

 

     But, to its credit, The Internship made me forget all about the cynicism and just go with the flow, following their adventure as the unlikely underdogs who succeed.  Because, who doesn't want that in this job market?