Movie Review: The Intern
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- In 2013's The Internship, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn were fortysomething interns.
In The Intern, which ups the ante, Robert De Niro is a – wait for it – seventysomething intern, providing an old-age variation to a middle-age comedy premise.
De Niro stars as retired, lonely, bored 70-year-old widower Ben Whittaker, looking to fill his time in Brooklyn with some worthwhile activity, who responds to an ad for an experimental senior intern as part of a community outreach program.
Anne Hathaway plays fashion entrepreneur and wife-and-mother Jules Ostin, the founder, president, and overworked micromanager of About the Fit, a startup e-commerce fashion retailer. The new intern is assigned to her willy-nilly, and she is feeling the pressure from her investors to hire a male CEO for her company.
The platonic, across-the-generations friendship between boss and intern is the kind of non-romantic relationship we don't encounter on the movie screen very often. And the script allows us to accept their relationship on those terms – more father-daughter than anything else -- by bringing in Rene Russo as the flirtatious company masseuse to provide a romantic interest for Ben.
Well into his career, two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro added comedy to his repertoire and has thrived at it ever since. But while he has often seemed uncomfortable in roles that lack a sharp neurotic edge, he seems perfectly comfortable inside the skin of this improbably patient, affable, and humble dispenser of wisdom to the twentysomethings.
Don't blame De Niro if Ben's narrative arc, given his can-do attitude and ever-ready resourcefulness, doesn't give him far to travel.
Not so Hathaway, whose character does go through unavoidable changes. The actress returns to her comedic roots after several very serious roles in Les Miserables and Interstellar, and her very involvement can't help but bring to mind The Devil Wears Prada, with Hathaway elsewhere on the corporate hierarchy.
Hathaway's character is sympathetic, De Niro's is appealing, and both stars are commanding and highly watchable.
With a light touch, writer-director Nancy Meyers (It's Complicated, Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday) explores ageism in the workplace as well as the difficulties of juggling work and home life, particularly for women.
But it's her obvious affection for both main characters that keeps things afloat. Not a rom-com as much as a calm-com, The Intern is a changeup from Meyers, bravely veering away from romance and moving in the direction of a character-driven friendship in which the characters genuinely appreciate each other.
So we'll fashion 3 stars out of 4 for The Intern, a pleasant workplace comedy that knows its place and works.
