THE INTERNSHIP

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are extremely likeable actors; their on -screen chemistry reverberates, echoes a  camaraderie that must bleed into their off- screen relationship; they verbalize and finish each others thoughts, their auras blend into a solid, granite friendship. Unfortunately, their likeability cannot salvage what could have been a fascinating scenario, which should have taken flight, but sadly whimpers, struggles and never gets off the ground.

“Google” founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (while they were working on their PHD’s at Stanford) is a behemoth that  along with “Apple”, changed the world;  allowed director Shawn Levy tremendous latitude in using Google’s Menlo Park campus and lending computer scientists to translate correctly “Googlese” to the novices, “Nooglers”.

Obsolete,  forty-something’s, sophisticated salesmen, vacantly devoid of computer skills, miraculously get a shot as interns in Google’s summer program; implausible, since approximately forty thousand brainiacs apply for space limited to fifteen hundred; a glimmer of hope, instantly dashed by celestial stereotyping; it is 2013,  everyone knows “nerds” can be beautiful, sociable, athletic ( Winkelvoss twins, Brit Marling, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Steve Nash); the interns are sophomoric, pasty, pod-like individuals, the world and  its fruits, at the their fingertips, yet they choose to hibernate in an airless,  charmless crypt, filled with androids, biometrics, gigabytes, algorithms.

“Billy” (Vaughn) and “Nick” (Wilson), benign misfits, “talk the talk” bring their paltry team and each other together with a barrage of platitudinous, pontificating sermons and an evening imbibing, lusting in a strip club; misty-eyed converts rally around the saccharine, worldly neophytes; “The Internship” sinks into maudlin, melodramatic predictability.

I like Wilson and Vaughn but not their “internship”.

TWO STARS!!

For Now…….Penelope