TORONTO — If this weekend’s new thriller Purge seems too scary, The Internship is a light-hearted alternative. Directed by Montreal native Shawn Levy (Real Steel, Night at the Museum), it stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as salesmen who land internships at Google after losing their jobs.
Does The Internship pay off with big laughs? Here’s a look at what some critics are saying.
The Toronto Star‘s Linda Barnard described the film as “a big wet kiss to Google wrapped in a buddy comedy that asks us to believe that nobody over 40 knows anything about computers or the online universe.”
Barnard went on to call it “a disappointing comedy masquerading as a Google ad.”
The blatant product placement was singled out by a number of reviewers.
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called The Internship a “two-hour commercial for Google World masquerading as an aspirational buddy comedy.”
“The name Google, surprise, appears in almost every scene in every conceivable cutesy, slangy permutation (noun, verb, adjective) in what sounds like every other line of dialogue,” she wrote. “That the studio releasing this feature-length ad, 20th Century Fox, would lend its brand to another branded behemoth like this is vulgar if not shocking, especially given how numbers-driven studios have become.”
Dargis said the jokes are sporadic and the film relies on the usual “buddy-film shenanigans.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Farber described The Internship as a “mild, likeable romp” and a “by-the-numbers confection.”
“The hucksters and the nerds bond and help each other to grow,” wrote Farber. “The message is unobjectionable, but the storytelling is unimaginative. Losers win the prize, squabbling lovers come together, and this overlong opus finally reaches a clever end-credit sequence that is the highlight of the picture.”
Critic Stephen Whitty of The Star Ledger in New Jersey took aim at The Internship‘s Canadian director.
“Is it possible to build a long and profitable career in comedy without making a single very good movie, or even displaying an obvious sense of humor? Shawn Levy seems to be living the dream,” he wrote.
Levy said the film “becomes just one big product placement, with callow co-stars and by-the-numbers plotting” and comes to a predictable end.
Carole Mallory of The Huffington Post agreed.
“Clichés abound,” she opined. “The direction by Shawn Levy is lackluster.”
Mallory urged readers to “skip this poor excuse for a movie.”
IGN reviewer Alicia Malone said The Internship “is extremely formulaic” with a story “ripped from any standard screenwriting book.”
But Malone didn’t completely hate the movie. “That’s mainly thanks to the reunion of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, who play their positive underdogs with more heart and less raunch than expected,” she said. “The characters are stereotypes, but the jokes are quite fresh, making The Internship just a good fun time.”
Matt Goldberg of Collider didn’t hold back in his review.
“Shawn Levy‘s comedy is filled with stock characters, lethargic storytelling, and slogs through a bloated runtime as stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson try to scrap together any laughs they can,” he wrote. “Even though Google dominates the picture, The Internship undermines the company by making it look like the most superficial and horrible place to work.”
As if that wasn’t clear enough, he added: “Anyone involved in The Internship should just be embarrassed.”
Of course, Justin Craig of Fox News wasn’t as harsh. (The Internship is released by 20th Century Fox.)
“The Internship is actually a sweet throwback to the formulaic comedies of the late 1970s and 1980s,” he said. “The chemistry between Wilson and Vaughn is kinetic and palpable. The two are completely in sync with each other and the spit-fire banter between them feels natural and improvisational.”
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