If there’s one thing Hollywood knows how to milk an idea until it’s dry. After the success of The Social Network and with the upcoming Steve Jobs movie it was inevitable that someone somewhere would make a film about Google.
Sadly that person was Vince Vaughn, so if you’re expecting high-brow film making I’d start looking elsewhere now. Those of you that just want some easy viewing at the end of a hard day, stay tuned.
The narrative is fairly simple. Two blokes who know literally NOTHING about computers are fired from their dead end job. One night, whilst searching for jobs they stumble across a Google internship and are pitted against the countries’ finest minds to land a permanent job with the company encountering plenty of obstacles along the way.
It’s all hideously predictable and even on paper it struggles to reach the benchmark set by The Social Network. The storyline is a bit half-hearted and there aren’t nearly enough nerdy references (there’s just not enough ‘googliness’). There is so much potential in this concept but I just can’t forgive the fact that for a good half an hour in the middle even Vince Vaughn (who wrote it, produced it AND starred in it) doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s going on, as we’re dragged into a long-winded club scene with no relevance to anything that has happened thus far.
On the whole though, here in Britain we love an underdog story and that’s exactly what this film is. Why the hell can’t two middle-aged men – who can barely even turn a computer on – wander into an internship at Google and pick up a comprehensive understanding of coding in the space of a few days? In the end you stop caring that these guys are rubbish at what they do and start rooting for the fact that they’re decent blokes trying to make up for lost time if only because, for the most part, you just want them to kick the ass of the spoilt rich kid who thinks it’s his god-given right to work for a multi-billion-dollar company (played by the wonderful Max Minghella from yep, you guessed it, The Social Network).
The Internship has a decent amount of laughs and the odd cringe when it comes to the ‘motivational speeches’ of Vaughn’s character Billy (although, I’m still not sure whether you’re meant to cringe at those moments or find them endearing). You’ll definitely see a little bit in your parents in the main characters as they try to put their photos “on the line”.
At the end of the day, this isn’t going to change the face of Cinema but if you just want to pass an hour or two then go and see it, it’s definitely not the worst film out there at the minute. I can guarantee that if you didn’t want to work at Google before then you’ll want to by the end of this film. Seriously, who doesn’t want their workplace to incorporate Quidditch matches, awesome branded bikes and huge slides?
Watch the trailer: