Review: The Intern
The Intern, like all of writer-director Nancy Meyers' films, is an enormously diverting confection that features beautifully furnished homes and modern office spaces, polished people who have a way with a wisecrack, and actors whose personalities power the narrative. Meyers, along with the late Nora Ephron, is an analog filmmaker in a digital world, and that can be as refreshing as it is problematic.
Looking over her filmography, it's easy to imagine Diane Keaton's harried career woman in Baby Boom being taken on by Rosalind Russell in the Thirties, or Myrna Loy and William Powell reuniting to portray the purportedly past their prime lovers of Something's Gotta Give. Their snap, crackle, and pop banter would be delivered whilst wearing envy-inducing wardrobe by Adrian and surrounded by the pristine and wholly impractical art direction of Cedric Gibbons. Indeed, Meyers loves depicting how people, particularly women, with perfect lives overcome fairly trifling problems. The Intern continues this thematic line and, whilst enjoyable and characteristically feel-good, it may be too genial and untroubled for its own good.
Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) is a widower and retired executive, two things that sound alarms in Meyers' universe where marriage and career are the primary aspirations. He has traveled the world, taken up hobbies, and has done everything he can to keep moving - anything to avoid confronting the emptiness of his day - but he knows the only thing that will make him whole again is work. As luck would have it, a senior internship program has just been established at a Brooklyn start-up. And so Ben finds himself the intern for the online fashion retailer's founder and CEO, Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway).
Jules is a perfectionist and workaholic, thoroughly committed to the company. She is the type who will man the customer service and show workers at the shipping factory how to pack the contents so the wrapping tissue remains uncrumpled upon delivery. She is also the sort who rides around the open space of the office on a bicycle, gets weirded out by people who don't blink, schedules meetings at 3:55PM, and acknowledges how difficult she is to work with and for, though this strikes one as more tell than show on the film's part. Jules goes above and beyond, so when she balks at the investors suggesting hiring another CEO to help deal with managing the ever-expanding business, her resistance is less about ceding control than being diminished in a job that she so clearly loves.
That Jules doesn't come off as an insufferable irritant is a huge testament to Hathaway, who shades the beigeness of her character and makes her dilemma of how to have it all both relatable and consequential. The gradual relationship that develops between Jules and Ben is one that is based on mutual respect and admiration, and both actors nicely spark off one another. De Niro is tremendously charming and such a pleasure to watch interacting with all of his co-stars that one can understand all the unnecessary asides Meyers tosses in. His interactions with this twentysomething compatriots (Adam DeVine, Zack Pearlman, and Jason Orley) work, the caper involving deleting an email from Jules' mother's laptop does not. The latter is so jarringly off-key, not just for the film but for all the characters involved.
Also striking some dissonant chords: the odd manner in which Jules is somewhat handicapped - though her life is one big hustle and bustle, she hardly ever seems to be actually moving of her own volition (she's either sitting, standing, on the bike, or being driven around); the treatment of Linda Lavin's Patty, whose romantic overtures are presented as unwanted and off-putting, compared to Rene Russo's golden-haired office masseuse, who's posited as Ben's more ideal love interest; Jules's cringe-inducing lament on the decline of Ben's brand of old-fashioned masculinity. There are actually some interesting points made in the latter - girls become women, but men become boys and that is more acceptable and less criticised - but these seem undercut by how the plight of Jules is presented. Here is a strong, independent woman who has no support from the female figures in her life (highly critical mother, equally critical stay-at-home moms) that it takes a 70-year-old man to celebrate her worth.
The Intern
Directed by: Nancy Meyers
Written by: Nancy Meyers
Starring: Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Anders Holm, Andrew Rannells, Adam DeVine, Zack Pearlman, Jason Orley, Linda Lavin, JoJo Kushner, Christina Scherer, Nat Wolff, Celia Weston
