The truth is, you'll probably find something in THE INTERN to like or laugh with, whether it's Robert De Niro interacting with millennials (mostly guys from "Workaholics," like Anders Holm and Adam DeVine) or the idea of Anne Hathaway being bad at anything... I'll let that one sink in for a second. But the problem with the new film from writer-director Nancy Meyers (SOMETHINGS’S GOTTA GIVE, WHAT WOMEN WANT) is that you'll only enjoy small pieces of it; the rest is difficult to get through without cringing or otherwise wishing for the sweet escape that death would bring you. I know that sounds mean, but I kid you not, this film runs a full two hours, and I promise you will feel every second of it. It's like the second hand of your watch is chasing you.
I like the premise of THE INTERN: 70-year-old Ben Whittaker (De Niro) is a widower and a recent retiree who is bored doing nothing at home. He takes classes, strikes up random conversations in places, and does everything in his power not to feel time going by (for example, he should not see this movie). One day, Ben spots a flyer for a start-up online fashion company looking for senior interns, and he nails the interview. So he throws on a jacket and tie and begins his new gig as an intern for the company CEO and founder Jules Ostin (Hathaway), who is tough to work for mainly because she's swamped at work and at home, with her husband Matt (Holm) and daughter (JoJo Kushner). Jules doesn't get enough sleep, and Ben makes it his mission to at least make her day a little easier so that can happen.
As the weeks go by, the two become friends, and Ben—a former sales associate—ends up having a lot of great ideas on how to streamline the company. Jules is a very hand-on leader, so she does things like takes a few customer service calls or goes to the warehouse that ships her clothes to see how they can do better work, but it stretches her days thin and as a result, the investors (represented by Andrew Rannells' Cameron) ask her to consider bringing in a more experienced CEO; they even allow her to be the one to select the new person, which puts even more stress on her.
But even Hathaway at her bitchiest is still pretty polite. At one point, she feels Ben is overstepping into her personal life, and then instantly regrets it and brings him back into her life even deeper. Everyone in this film is a decent human being, which would be great in a real-life work environment, but I don't know a single working human being that enjoys a job like that. De Niro is dishing out relationship advice to 20-somethings who only know how to communicate via electronics; he's making time with the office masseuse Fiona (Rene Russo); and he's babysitting Jules' daughter because they adore each other. Everything is just so nice all the time that even when a bit of drama enters the picture, it feels contrived and decidedly solvable.
A film like this might appeal to older audiences, but I have to imagine that even folks closer in age to De Niro than Hathaway would get a little bored after about 80 minutes. I'm completely in favor of the messages the film has about listening to our elders and benefitting from their wisdom about business and people pleasing, but all of that is spoon fed to us in a workplace comedy with low-grade laughs and weird subplots that don't add up to anything. There's a strangely placed scene in which we find out De Niro has high blood pressure (he's spotting popping a pill for it after overexerting himself), which would seem to be a set up for a health scare sequence later. But nope, at least not in this cut of the film. There's another sequence in which Ben and his young co-workers break into Jules' mother's home to delete an accidental email Jules sent. It's kind of amusing, but it takes us miles out of the main story for some cheap giggles.
The bottom line is that THE INTERN is whole-heartedly mediocre—an intense beige, if you will. It's not especially funny, insightful or inspirational. The proceedings are certainly elevated by the more seasoned, Oscar-winning actors at the center of it, but even they seem to be struggling to find a motivating force to propel them forward, into the lame abyss that is this film.
