The Intern Review
Nancy Meyers, the screenwriter behind classic feel-good movies such as Baby Boom, The Parent Trap and Father of the Bride, returns to the silver screen with The Intern.
Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro co-star in Meyers’ new film about the efforts of a 70-year-old, Ben Whittaker (De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook), to find purpose in his life again after years of retirement-induced boredom.
Jokingly, he explains, “Sigmund Freud said love and work, work and love, that’s all there is. Well, I’m retired, and my wife’s dead.”
The film itself is one giant take on the influence of generational gaps, and it starts at the very beginning. After submitting his video application for a senior internship at Jules Ostin’s (Hathaway, Les Misérables) company, About The Fit, Ben is brought into an atmosphere unlike anything he’s used to. Ben, who opts to wear a suit to work every single day and doesn’t get a smartphone until halfway through the movie, is a guy with a can-do attitude and 40 years in the field of business.
After getting the job, his role in the company headquarters changes pretty rapidly from nothing, to odd jobs, to eventually being at Jules’ beck and call.
Although it might seem cluttered with Apple product placement, the business aspect of the film is still crafted pretty well. About The Fit is a startup created by Jules to provide clothing to women guaranteed to fit them on the first try. She micromanages every aspect of the company, all the way down to answering the customer-service calls, instead of turning that obligation over to someone from her 220-member staff.
She also makes an effort to keep herself on the same social level as her employees, which includes never having a private office and ringing a bell for every good thing accomplished by the company.
Ben’s role in Jules’ life seeps out of the workplace and into home when he has to start helping her handle her role as a working mother. Her overbooked schedule unfortunately also opens her up to criticism by other moms who stay home to take care of their kids. This is when things start to feel like a backward sequel to The Devil Wears Prada.
One of the many conflicts of the film is introduced when Jules is approached by investors who don’t think she can handle her company on her own and want to take some of her workload off her hands. Meyers does a pretty fantastic job at inserting the reality of what it’s like for women who want to be entrepreneurs in the 21st century.
Jules is hit with encounter after encounter with power-wielding men who think being sexist and demeaning is still excusable in 2015, but she isn’t having any of it.
Ben becomes a grandfather figure to Jules when another conflict develops. Jules thinks she can have it all, but her marriage is a mess she hardly has the time to think about. Her husband, who gave up his own career to provide for their family, feels left out. Hathaway and De Niro’s characters develop a real bond on a business trip to San Francisco, where they cry over their marriages with hotel snacks.
As this paternal figure, Ben helps Jules out more than she helps him. Fortunately, the humor laced into their dialogue balances out the rather heavy conflicts of the film.
Meyers’ new film, which features other familiar faces such as Rene Russo (Thor), Adam DeVine (Pitch Perfect 2) and Nat Wolff (The Fault In Our Stars), is perfect for those nights when a thirtysomething gets home from work and needs something to sink into with a bottle of wine.
As for the rest of the world, it’s simply a humorous and slightly uplifting film that we’ll see once and probably forget about.
