The Internship isn’t bad – or good. It’s just weak. Fans of the Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson classic The Wedding Crashers will recognize the characters and the shtick. So change the title to The Internship Crashers and you’ll surely get the drift. Vaughn and Wilson play Billy and Nick, a couple of luxury-watch salesmen who lose their jobs when the company they work for goes belly-up. After all, who needs a watch when you’ve got a smart phone? For reasons that my cynical job-hunting self had trouble swallowing, the two land a pair of coveted internships at Google, touted as the best place to work in America (Free food! Volleyball! Napping pods!).
Billy, Nick, and a swarm of other interns are divided up into teams, sandlot style, to compete in a series of challenges. The winning team is guaranteed a full-time job at Google. Let the games begin! May the odds be ever in your favor! Oh wait, wrong movie…
Anyway, the rest of the movie plays out like an episode of Community meets The Breakfast Club. Billy and Nick and their team of misfits must learn to trust one another and work together to beat the more popular and pompous kids on campus.
There is a certain relevance and relatability to Billy and Nick, 40-somethings whose careers are suddenly deemed obsolete. There’s a lesson in there somewhere about having the willingness and ability to learn new skills later in life, and having the opportunity to apply more traditional skills to the digital world.
The Internship is far less raunchy – and has more heart – than you might expect. But it’s also quite formulaic and predictable. The kids learn from the grown-ups. The grown-ups learn from the kids. Nick romances an over-achieving manager played by Rose Byrne, determined to show her that there’s life outside the Google compound. “Googliness” is routinely used as an adjective.
Vaughn and Wilson have an easy compatibility on-screen as two best buds just trying to make their way in the world. And they’re generally cute to watch. But I gotta say – Wilson’s nose was even more distracting than usual. It didn’t just look crooked – it looked bruised. What up with that? 
Bottom line: The Internship is the type of movie that will help pass the time on a future cross-country flight while you’re noshing away on a tiny bag of peanuts or surfing the internet for jobs and internships. We should all be so lucky as to land a gig at Google!