Review: The Internship

Before you start reading this review, just know, I’m not a film critic, I’m a tech guy.  This review of The Internship is from the perspective of someone who lives and breathes technology every day.

We learned back in February that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn landed internships at Google, well, sort of.  When I heard about the film, I knew I had to see it.  Why?  Because I loved the Wedding Crashers, and when Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn work together it’s typically (very) funny.  Plus, it’s about Google.  So how bad could it be?

The new feature film, The Internship, which is out as of today (June 7), stars both of them in their journey as summer interns at Google.  Both Wilson and Vaughn play out of work salesmen, who don’t know a lick of programming and are far from computer savvy, but somehow manage to score an internship at Google after an interesting yet awkward interview that takes place over Google Hangouts.

The two show up to their first day at the Mountain View search giant, only to quickly feel like they are out of place due to their age and lack of tech knowledge.  At one point, Nick, Owen Wilson’s character says, “We’re looking at some sort of mental hunger games against a bunch of genius kids for just a handful of jobs.”  The movie makes a big play on competition amongst teams and that at the end of the summer only one team will be guaranteed jobs at Google.

Based on what I know about real Google internships, that is far from the case.  Any intern can potentially land a job at Google, if they have the right stuff.  Anyway, back to the movie.

The interns in the movie have to debug code, man the Google help desk (and help customers), complete sales challenges (presumably to get businesses signed up to AdWords, though it wasn’t specifically mentioned), and even compete in Quidditch (which does look like fun to play in real life).

The movie has its funny moments, more than a few.  Unfortunately, however, most of the funniest moments appear in the trailer.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin also makes two cameo appearances in the movie, one in the beginning when they arrive at the Google campus and one at the end [Spoiler alert] after they are offered the jobs.

Overall, I liked the movie.  It’s not great, but it’s not terrible — it’s good.  Words of caution though, if you were hoping for the same knee-slapping laughter you get when watching Wedding Crashers, don’t.  Entertainment value aside, the movie is essentially a big Google commercial, which is fine, and I hope it brings even more attention to Google and its internship program.  We need more kids getting really into technology and building great things.

You can watch the trailer for The Internship below.  Have you seen the movie?  What did you think?