Vince Vaughn & Owen Wilson Goofing On Google Doesn’t Go Very Far

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THE INTERNSHIP (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2013)

Using the tried and true tropes of the slobs versus snobs/underdogs become winners formula, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson take on the ginormous corporation that is Google in this slightly funny, but completely disposal comedy.

But they don’t really take on Google, so much as kiss its ass by portraying it as a tech world Mecca that those well below retirement age, such as with the 40-something Vaughn and Wilson out on their asses after their boss (John Goodman) closes their company, would dream of having as their workplace.

As the not-so-tech savvy yet slick talking salesmen who wormed their way into an internship with the search engine empire, Vaughn and Wilson are looking to re-ignite the comic spark that made their previous collaboration, 2005's WEDDING CRASHERS, a huge hit, but like a lighter that you keep flicking but can’t get a full flame going, this effort should be tossed into the waste bin.

That’s not to say there are some legitimate laughs here and there, Vaughn’s power-riffing and Wilson’s way with a one-liner made me chuckle every now and then, but it’s as if they reached the minimum quota of sure-fire funny and thought it would suffice.

The funny bits are all up front such as a Skype interview Vaughn and Wilson do from a library with The Office’s B.J. Novak, in which the duo dance around their disqualifications amusingly, and the film also shoots its wad early by placing its Will Ferrell cameo (as a sleazy mattress salesman that Wilson briefly works for) in the first 15 minutes.

Not much interesting happens in THE INTERNSHIP after the mild chuckling dies down.

Vaughn and Wilson get together with a scruffy group of outcasts including Josh Brener, Dylan O'Brien, Tiya Sircar, and Tobit Raphael to compete against several other teams for the coveted award of employment at Google, and the challenges they tackle (creating a new app, developing call service skills, marketing a pizza restaurant) are dull sitcom-ish scenerios.

Max Minghella (THE SOCIAL NETWORK) is the chief antagonist, as the leader of a rival group of interns that he verbally abuses, and The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi as a snooty internship program leader looks down on our supposed heroes, but is mainly there to be a straight man to Vaughn.

In the obligatory scene in which the group needs to loosen up so they hit a bar for some partying shenanigans, there’s a predictable run-in with a group of blonde frat types headed by Brian F. Durkin, who the Woody Allen-ish Brener zings by calling Biff Tannen (a BACK TO THE FUTURE reference – will the kids today get it?) while he's hitting on a stripper (Jessica Szohr).


It’s another instance where the film feels like just an amalgam of set-pieces from a bunch of ‘80s comedies, like STRIPES and BACK TO SCHOOL.

There is the difference that while Bill Murray in STRIPES (and all his roles of the period) had what A.V. Club writer Phil Dyess-Nugent recently called his “signature fake sincerity” going on, and Vaughn, despite his motor-mouth show-biz hipster speak, actually is sincere.

Murray would tell you that you’re the best, schmoozing you all up, but then he’d be out the door once you’re on his side (or not).

Vaughn, in this movie, when he wants Mandvi to like him and be his friend, he means it and he won’t take no for an answer. It’s endearing, but hardly a trait that elevates this lame enterprise.

Director Levy has made a career out of mediocre comedy fare like this (See: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, THE PINK PANTHER remake, the NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM movies, or, better yet, don’t see them), so this one’s suckiness is no surprise.

With its bright primary-colored atmosphere, free food (Vaughn takes ample advantage of this perk), and its unconventional work environment, Google does indeed look like a worker’s paradise. However, the half-assed conventions of this movie just reduce it to a stylish backdrop behind a couple of wiseacres trying in vain to get down with youth computer culture.

If you love these guys and have to see THE INTERNSHIP because you thought WEDDING CRASHERS was the greatest movie ever, at least opt for a matinee. This almost 2 hour infomercial for Google and the continuing comic relevance of Vaughn and Wilson is seriously not worth a full price admission.

More later...

A Few DVD Reviews & More Awards Season Whatnot

As it's Awards season, there's no lack of lists and polls, or bitchin' about the results of said lists and polls going on. 



So I thought I'd mention that I voted in the 2012 Muriel Awards, the results of which are being posted starting today. Check them out here. Be sure to keep checking back as they will be trickled out over the next few weeks.

I just submitted my 2012 movie rankings to The LAMB (the Large Association of Movie Blogs). I'll let you know when those are posted.



And I wrote about the Oscar nominated shorts in last Friday's Raleigh N & O: “Oscar short film nominees offer a lot of entertainment” (Feb. 1st, 2013)

Now for a few reviews of movies from last year I'm catching up with:

THE WATCH (Dir. Akiva Schaffer, 2012)

There are more CGI effects than there are laughs, or even attempts at laughs, in last summer’s flop comedy THE WATCH, which I just watched on DVD. Ben Stiller, in his standard uptight goody two shoes role, stars as a Costco manager who starts a neighborhood watch with Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade to get to the bottom of the mysterious murder of one of Stiller's Costco security guards (Joseph A. Nunez).

For a while it doesn’t even feel like the movie has a screenplay as it largely consist of the four leads riffing on top of the flimsy material, and once it gets to its major set pieces involving invading aliens, the gags are almost non-existent.

Schaffer, one-third of the SNL Digital Shorts masterminds/musical satirists The Lonely Island (the other members, Adam Sanberg and Jorma Taccone put in a cameo in an orgy scene), competently stitches together what Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg supposedly wrote down, but it never amounts to anything more than half-assed humor. Schaffer’s previous film, HOT ROD, was actually laugh out loud funny, you're lucky to get a few mild chuckles out of this.

Rosemarie DeWitt, a familiar face from quite a few recent indie films, plays Stiller's wife in what's mainly a sideline role, but she gets to run around with the guys during the Costco-set climatic battle, so at least she gets out of the house. Vaughn's wife (Erinn Hayes) isn't so lucky as she's only in one scene and doesn't even have a line.

I almost snickered a little when Will Forte (SNL, MACGRUBER) as a snarky cop who ridicules Stiller and crew would pop up, and some of Vaughn’s motor-mouthed character’s banter who see himself as a “cool dad” made me come close to smiling, and occasionally got close to giggling at Ayoade, who though strongly underutilized, is a welcome fresh face among the other’s overly familiar shtick, but I just couldn’t get down with the dick joke mentality and the sloppy plotting. So another less than stellar Ben Stiller vehicle that wasn’t a smash, what else is new?

COMPLIANCE (Dir. Craig Zobel, 2012)

There are parts of this film that made me so uncomfortable I felt like leaving the room, but I knew I’d still be looking back at the screen through the doorway if I did. Screenwriter/director Zobel based his film, his second after GREAT WORLD OF SOUND, on a real life scenario that’s has surprisingly happened many times - a prank call that leads to sexual assault.

At a fictional Chickwich fast food restaurant, in Ohio (Ohio again!), the manager (Ann Dowd) gets a call from a man claiming to be a police officer who has been in touch with the chain’s regional manager. The man, who we only hear as a disembodied voice for the first third of the film, tells Dowd that one of her employees, a 19-year old blonde cashier, has stolen money from a customer, and that this is part of a larger investigation.

Dowd brings the girl (Dreama Walker) to the backroom office and questions her about the theft following the man’s instructions. Walker denies taking the money, and Dowd can’t find it in her pockets or purse. The man then instructs Dowd to perform a strip search. With another supervisor (Ashlie Atkinson) present, Walker takes off all her clothes, including her underwear, and we know that phony voice of authority is going to take this twisted gag as far as he can go.

By this time, we have gotten random shots of the man, played by Pat Healy, who is obviously not a cop, at his home with a bunch of store bought calling cards. Healy lounges around as he gives orders on the phone, makes a sandwich, waters plants, etc. all the while putting these poor people through humiliating sexual situations of his own devising. 

A co-worker of comparable age to Walker, who spends most of her role naked with only a Chickwich apron covering her, Philip Ettinger, refuses to go along with what Healy tells him to do, but Dowd’s boyfriend (Bill Camp), called in from a night drinking, is more susceptible. The restaurant is slammed while this is all going on, so Dowd is torn away to serve customers up front and is majorly oblivious to how crazy-go-nuts it gets.

As if to remind us that it's an art film, Zobel intersperses close-ups of fries sizzling in grease, grimy floors, and other mundane bits of the restaurant’s unappealing décor throughout the film, so you fully get the closed-in vibe of this messed-up material. What I couldn’t stop thinking was, are these people really that stupid to not question that anybody could just call and identify themselves as police? Then I had to remind myself that this has happened, and that, yes, people can get that horribly manipulated.

Although it can come across as exploitive speculation on the premise of the strip search prank call scam, COMPLIANCE is cringe-inducing cinema at is most involving. It falters in its last 10-15 minutes when it becomes a procedural crack down on the caller, and then gives us an un-insightful scene of Dowd being interviewed on a magazine style news show about the ordeal, but for a large compelling chunk of its running time, it’s one of 2012’s best, and oddest, thrillers.

More later...