The premise is so dated, satire website The Onion has already ridiculed The Internship as a funny movie — for 2005. Point taken. By now, a film about anyone being on the wrong side of the cultural divide carved out by the Internet is well past its sell-by date. But despite its limitations — the facile lessons about perseverance and by-the-numbers structure — The Internship turns out to be consistently and sometimes surprisingly funny — especially if you appreciate the comedy stylings of star/coscreenwriter Vince Vaughn.
Vaughn and Owen Wilson deliver the same brand of elder frat-boy humor they showcased in Wedding Crashers. After the watch company (run by John Goodman, in a cameo) they work for goes belly up, Billy and Nick (Vaughn and Wilson) believe themselves to be without job prospects. (It is a ridiculous notion that motormouth Billy, who’s so confident in his abilities, would think himself at the end of his rope.) Inspired by a night of online job searching, Billy rescues Nick from a job as a mattress salesman. This brings the pair to Silicon Valley and Google headquarters, where they’ve earned an internship that will give them the chance to compete for a full-time, paying gig.
Bill and Nick are aware of their limitations and disadvantages in the midst of 20-something computer geeks, vacillating between discouragement and ambition. To compensate, Vaughn is all rapid-fire, freewheeling metaphors, pop culture references, and bullshit. Some of the film’s funniest moments come from Billy’s reliance on his gift for gab while the other members of his intern team see right through him. The comedy works because we know Billy’s not oblivious but he can’t stop his verbal momentum. One of the movies best bits has Billy “inventing” Instagram even as his fellow interns try to convince him it’s already a thing. As Nick, Wilson plays his brand of earnest, sweet, and disarmingly funny nice guy. He also gets a sweetly amusing date scene in which he endears himself to his date by packing 10 years of jerky behavior into one evening.
The Internship is best enjoyed as a series of weird little detours that generally don’t overstay their welcome, even if they don’t all reach inspired levels of amusement. One scene that lingers just long enough features Rob Riggle as a mobility scooter salesman who sometimes bangs his clients.
The Onion’s jabs at The Internship do more than provoke ridiculing laughter at a dated concept. They underscore this effort as a pretty meek comedy — one that reveres Google as a cultural utopia, celebrating its ability to connect people with information. The film suggests that how you make your money is just as important as how much you make. But the darker reality is that Google has also begotten a culture in which stories matter only as link bait to get that next click and justify higher ad rates. That disconnect somewhat mutes the pleasures of a movie that might have applied a smidge of its quick wittedness in the service of insight and relevance.
