Trouble navigating the web? Considered using Google? If you haven’t, we may have located the audience for ‘The Internship’, a two-hour celebration of the technology behemoth masquerading as a jaunty reunion for the appealing oafs of ‘Wedding Crashers’. As disenfranchised dinosaurs Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn bumble their way through a Google internship program for sneering graduates, the film repeatedly halts the hijinks to admire the company’s generous corporate ethos and colourfully casual work environment. It’s as dispiritingly naff as those Mitchell and Webb Apple ads from a few years back, but at least those admitted being ads.
It’s a testament to the duo’s jazzy comic chemistry that they wring some laughs from this dated, frankly sinister premise. The free-association webcam interview that scores them the internship in the first place is inspired, and there’s genuine sweetness to their inevitable bonding with a team of fellow social outcasts, united in competition against Max Minghella’s oily alpha male. Only in Hollywood, however, could a company diversity policy exist to boost the fortunes of two middle-aged white guys.