By CHRIS SURPRENANT
Managing Editor
All young, bright college students hope to one day land that position that will propel their career to unprecedented heights. They study hard, get good grades, and do everything to keep their minds in perfect working condition. The day comes when they’ll hear back from The Man who will decide whether or not they’re good enough to be a part of something big. After turning blue from holding their breath, surprise! Rejection.
That’s the premise behind the Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s latest buddy comedy The Internship. Vaughn and Wilson star as Billy and Nick respectively, two successful, fast-talking watch salesmen in a world that now sells itself faster than any human ever could. Sure, they’re great at what they do, and they’ve done it all their lives. But now, in a world where the human touch is second to the digital fingerprint, Billy and Nick are obsolete.
So what are two broke, middle-aged guys supposed to do when set adrift in the seas of cyberspace? Land an internship at Google, that’s what. In what appears like a playground of really intelligent adults, Billy and Nick are immersed in an ocean of twenty-something techies armed with smartphones. They team up with an unlikely group of lovable losers (of course) who, predictably, think two old guys in Rolexes can’t be of much use. That’s the film’s first issue. Why would Google, one of the magnates of the Internet Age, hire not one, but two aging men with no concept of the World Wide Web? Billy refers to being online as being “on the line,” for God’s sake.
The pair starts at their summer at Google with their leery supervisor Chetty—a hilariously uptight Aasif Mandvi—and a ragtag team of misfits: the brooding Stuart (Dylan O’Brien), stock nerds Neha and Lyle (Tiya Sircar and Josh Brener), and the self-loathing Asian prodigy Yo-Yo. Playing up stereotypes, Yo-Yo plucks out his eyebrows whenever he underperforms as the result of intense Tiger-mothering. Sircar’s Neha isn’t at all convincing as a “nerd” just because she makes a couple comic book references. However, Brener’s Lyle is about as real as they get. Of all the supporting cast, O’Brien’s Stuart shows the most depth. He shifts from an angsty, indifferent guy to someone who realizes that life exists beyond his tiny screen. While that message is great on the micro level, it doesn’t play out as cleanly in the full-length feature.
Rather than imply that humanity still matters in the Age of Digital Indifference, the film beats viewers over the head with a Chromebook. It’s that blunt. For the majority of the film, the audience is treated to various ways old fogies and digital natives can work together to brighten the future of technology. For the younger crowd, Billy and Nick are compelled to learn Quiditch. The rest of the team knows the rules, but they aren’t athletes by any stretch of the imagination. It’s up to Billy and Nick, champions of humanity, to show them how to work together. Then, of course, Billy and Nick are given the chance to shine in the customer service challenge, where they, not surprisingly, excel.
While I commend Vaughn and company for creating a film that raises a lot of poignant questions, I can’t say that it was exactly cohesive. Each scene felt like its own separate vignette, only loosely connected to the other ones. There’s a silly subplot involving Wilson and a career-minded Rose Byrne that further says thirty-somethingsshould essentially balance work and play, or be miserable forever. It’s just been done before, and nothing makes it stand out. Is the comedy there? Yes. It’s a typical Vince Vaughn movie. He’s a bumbling oaf whereas Wilson plays the apprehensive, level-headed one. Is it a classic? No. If it’s remembered at all, it’ll just be known as “that Google movie.”
The Internship, in the end, plays out like a public service announcement, saying “Hey, you kids! Us old people still have value! Just teach us how to use computers and we can be friends!” More broadly, it says that technology can’t just rely on technology alone. People, actual people, need to get together to give technology the essential human touch. While I agree, the delivery is as sloppy as a letter from the Postal Service in January. It gets there eventually, tattered and torn, but you know in the back of your mind that Gmail would have been much more efficient.
