Funny men Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson become interns at Google, what could possibly go wrong?
If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "Hi."
I just finished watching "The Internship" staring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Oh wow was it great. Here's the run down, Vince and Owen are watch salesmen and the company goes under because people aren't buying watches anymore since everyone just looks at their cell phone, and now both of them are unemployed. Owen ends up working for his sister's husband, played by Will Ferrell, at his mattress store. Vince however has his house foreclosed on and his girlfriend leaves him. When googling jobs he could work for, he discovers an internship program at google. Because of their age, they are wild cards when compared to the other interns in their early 20s. Their internship program, win challenges as a group in order to get permanent jobs at Google. Their group consists of the "left overs" of the interns; there's an "I'm too cool for you" hipster, there's an "I want to please my parents but can't" guy, a socially awkward nerd girl, and then there's the 2 guys in their 40s who don't know what HTML or C++ is, and they're all led buy an enthusiastic but incompetent google employee. Their challenges consist of finding a bug in 2 million lines of code, a quidich match, make a successful app, run the Google help line, and get someone major to advertize on google. How about I stop right here just short of spoilers and talk about the humor.
Now for the humor. Oh man, is this movie funny. For any young adult who has had to explain technology to older people like their parents, you will laugh harder than others. A lot of the humor early on is derived from Vince and Owen being technologically illiterate. For example, since this is a position at google, they initially interview over google plus hangout and there's a full minute of them doing an "is the red light on?" routine trying to figure out how to use google plus hangout. As I mentioned earlier, the group is really "rag-tag" with all sorts of different personalities and skills, which leads to lots of funny situations, specifically between the old 40 year olds and the young 21 year old interns. As I mentioned in the challenges, one was make an app. The young guys jump right into product development and the old guys are like "WAIT! we need an idea for an app, like what about one that takes pictures and immediately posts it on the line." Yes, they really said "on the line" as opposed to "online." The young guys keep telling them "that's instagram, facebook bought it for 1 billion dollars," and they kept coming up with ideas for this app, and it just kept being instagram.Really, anyone who likes tech or had to explain tech to an older person needs to see this.
I don't normally go into detail about the acting, but the portrayal of the different character types was spot on. Vince and Owen did an amazing job not knowing close to anything about technology. I know from first hand experience what that looks like, and they nailed it. Some might say it was over the top, but I assure you that people like that exist. Then there was the other guys in the group. The hipster guy, well it's not to hard to act like you don't care, but the awkward nerd girl definitely gave a performance similar to that of some people I know in real life. And the way that the guy who couldn't please his parents gradually pulled out his right eyebrow, perfect for showing the stress he faced wit his home life. Team leader, well he did give a convincing forced enthusiasm while incompetent sort of deal, but nothing to spectacular. But what really hit it home was how they managed the "I hate you all" but slowly became friends was great. It was like one of those sports movies with the misfit team of rejects that become a close team sort of things without the sports. One of the best scenes showcasing the friendship was when Vince was talking with nerd girl and Owen was talking to hipster about life and living life. Here we have 2 guys in their 40s who've basically lived their lives and have loads of life experience passing on their wisdom to the next generation and letting these kids know "it's OK to enjoy life." In fact the part where Vince is telling nerd girl she's pretty and "just wait there's a boy out there for you" might not have worked so well if Vince wasn't twice as old as her. If he was more her age, it might have come off as more of a come on, but this ended up being more of fatherly advice due to the age difference. Really good acting and directing here.
Now there is a bit of an underdeveloped romantic sub-plot in this film between Owen and a google employee. But here's the thing, even though it's underdeveloped, it's not entirely bad. The google employee is your typical "I'm super pretty but I don't date I have bigger priorities but I'm longing for the time that I missed because all my friend are married and have kids and I'm just sitting here working for one of the best companies in the world alone and you are the first person to show interest in me in quite some time" kind of love interest. That's I'm paraphrasing, but that was basically a direct quote. Owen peruses her and she plays hard to get, but then he convinces her to go on date and fun was had, but that's kind of it. Now in most cases, this would be a "why wasn't it developed more?" or "why was this included it didn't add anything to the story or characters?" But that isn't really the case. What this minor sub-plot did was add more humanness to Owen and developed him in a was handled in a way only Owen Wilson could handle. Though it did develop the Owen character more, the fact that it didn't go very far helped in the believability of the "relationship." This isn't a romantic comedy where ugly girl gets a make over and gets the hot guy or nerd comedy where nerd does something to either get the cheer leader or find his true match is with his best friend or one of those other movies involving getting the girl or guy. And, to play the stereotype card, she's an engineer and Owen is an engineer, and us engineers don't have romantic relationships. Kidding to any engineer out there who may read this. I'm an engineering student and will keep with engineering so I can say those sorts of things. Anyways, it wouldn't really feel normal for it to have gone very far, especially since this isn't that kind of movie.
All in all, if you want a movie that delivers laugh after laugh, you like technology, and/or you have tried to explain technology to someone older than yourself, you need to see this movie. The story is decent but the acting and execution of everything is great. It might be a rent for people who aren't into technology and have never had to explain it to people, but it's a must see for the affirmed mentioned. Go and see it. Go! NOW!
Now there is one thing that I was wondering though; who's paying whom for all the Google stuff? Since the movie is based on a real company and is using the name for their personal gain, they would need to pay Google for the right to use the Google name. But then there's all the showcasing of Google products like maps and translate and Android and how awesome Google is, so that's product placement advertizing for which Google would pay the movie company. Ah I guess I'll find out when I rent the blu-ray and watch all the bonus features and cometary. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment