Movie Review: The Internship (Tuesday, June 25, 2013)

This is not a movie I would typically go see. I don't really like comedy, particularly of the stupid juvenile sort that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are known for. But, this is a movie about Google, and I figure as a Noogler, I should see the movie, so when people I know ask me about it, I can answer intelligently. Also, Google bought us all tickets for this morning's showing.

The movie has some really great moments, and honestly, it's not a bad story. But it's also got some of those typical Vaughn and Wilson moments that just make me want to exit the theater - like overuse of Alanis Morissette's song Ironic (irony: writing a song called Ironic where none of the situations mentioned are examples of irony).

I liked most of the "hero" characters in the film, and the antagonists, are of course, detestable. The geeks are sufficiently geeky, and there are some truly spectacular moments of nerdiness. The film is decidedly non-technical, but there are plenty of references to Google products. There was one great moment where Owen Wilson interrupts a seminar to ask why they don't change the default editor in Ubuntu from vi to Emacs. Of course, if it had really been a roomful of geeks, that would have resulted in violence as the vi geeks battled it out with the Emacs geeks. And then there was a wonderful scene involving a game of Muggle Quidditch. I want to know why there was no Muggle Quidditch and my Noogler orientation??

Large portions of the film take place at recognizable locations on Google's Mountain View campus, though there were a few significant departures from reality. For example, a character couldn't name any nearby restaurants because she doesn't get out much, but in reality, there's actually no place to eat near Google's campus, and anyway, they serve three meals a day on campus, so no one really bothers to go out anyway. It looks like most of the "going out" in the film ended up in San Francisco - more than an hour away from campus, even in light traffic. Still those are minor nits. The major departure is that this film is some weird combination of Google's internship program, Noogler orientation, and interview candidate's worst nightmare. It just doesn't work that way.

But who cares? That's not the point. They're telling a story. The film has the typical cliché moments of rejection and redemption, and the formula is nothing new. But if you think Google would be your dream job, or you like absurd comedy, then you might get a kick out of it.