Writer-director Nancy Meyers has carved a niche as the purveyor of banal, slightly funny chick comedies, often focussing on romance among the older generation. Evidence for the prosecution would include SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE, IT'S COMPLICATED and now THE INTERN. This is a harmless, very schmaltzy, barely comedy starring Robert de Niro as a 70 year old widower who goes to work for Anne Hathaway's stressed out boss of an internet start-up. We're told again and again that Hathaway's character, Jules, is meant to be hard to deal with. A younger version of Meryl Streep's character in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA if you will. But of course neither Hathaway nor Meyers are willing to let Jules get that ugly and so we are less invested in how charming silver fox Ben (de Niro) gets through to her. Turns out that she's actually all soft and fuzzy, and so is he, and that she's just battling with being asked to take on a CEO, and a dissatisfied stay at home dad. Naturally he becomes an avuncular figure, giving advice to all the lost millennials in the office and brings Jules some measure of work-life balance. There's nothing actively bad about this movie. It's earnest and decently enough acted and does what is says on the tin. It's just sad to see a movie so transparent in its plot movements and emotional manipulation.
THE INTERN has a running time of 121 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on global release.
No comments:
Post a Comment