The Internship - 1 1/2 smiles

I don’t like stupid comedies and the trailer for “The Internship” plays up all of the stupid parts so it was with some trepidation that I went to see the latest from Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. It’s better than I was expecting, but that’s not saying much. This movie places a lot of its hope on the likability of its stars, but this can only carry a two-hour movie so far. There has to be character, story and, most importantly, an emotional core and all are missing. The story is mostly a cliché about the wise older generation teaching life lessons to the youngsters and any emotional response is a manipulated tack-on at the end. And it’s unsettling to see two reasonably gifted comic actors play clueless oldies who just can’t get the hang of this brand-new Internet thing.

As the movie opens, a client tells longtime pals and business partners Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) that the company that employed them has gone out of business. While Nick goes to work in his brother-on-law’s mattress store, Billy searches the Web and somehow lands an online interview with the Google people. The internship committee takes pity and before long, Billy and Nick land at the company’s ultra-slick, wildly fun San Francisco headquarters, where they’re forced to attend corporate brainwashing sessions and participate in group competitions.  They fall in with a crew of bright social misfits (Dylan O’Brien, Tiya Sinclair, Tobit Raphael and Josh Brener) and teach them life lessons by taking them out for Chinese food and then to a strip club. All the while a haughty tech snob (Max Minghella) taunts them cruelly, but you know he’s going to get his just desserts by the end credits. “The Internship” is formulaic in its humor and smug and self-congratulatory in tone. What’s to like? 6/10/13