The Internship delivers on the laughs that are always associated with a Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson movie. Our story here is two seasoned salesmen who find out from a customer, not their boss who is played by John Goodman, that the company they work for is closing it’s doors for good. So what do they do? They enroll at an online College and then apply for an Internship with Google. When you take a real company that is used by so many people in various forms and functional factors (I’m in IT, does it show??) you can ground the story in some reality that should make you want to care about Billy and Nick’s (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson) story. It’s called using familiarity to force a connection between the story and the audience.

This could have easily been called We Love You Google! as the love of all that is Google is the backbone of the story. Not only is the setting at Google’s California campus but we get a lot of “Google-ing” throughout the movie with events taking place around applications and services that Google has to offer WHILE also dealing with Nick and Billy’s interactions and integrations with the rest of the new Interns. It’s a good premiss on paper and it’s a good execution on screen and it does make you wonder who – Director Shawn Levy, writer Jared Stern, and Vince Vaughn is also has writing credits with the screenplay – if not all of them must have stock in Google.

So what did I think of The Internship? My thoughts are after the break.

Grade: 3 out of 5 starsA very simple premise with lots of situational humor that shows the growth of two different generations as they work together for the ultimate goal –  a job with Google. And it works. Vaughn is really able to make characters that you care about and want to cheer for and manages to make you care that Billy and Nick are the “older” generation while working with the Intern group to win the Noogle (Google’s word for newbies) Games. It’s The Hunger Games in the tech landscape as the groups of Interns battle each other to win their job with Google.

Throughout the film the funny comes from the situations Billy and Nick find themselves in as they try to use their world-taught skills in the new world of Google and the Internet (or as Bill keeps calling it, “on the line”).

The Good:

• Funny, funny, funny, funny – lots of laughs throughout the movie.
• Likeable characters that you want to cheer for.
• Great cast consisting of Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, Josh Gad (as the quite programer that no one talks to nor does he talk to them yet is one of the best at Google), Max Minghella (as Max the “bad-guy” of the story; he is the main Intern that wants to win the job with Google and will try to stack the deck to get the career).
• Funny appearances by Will Ferral and Rob Riggle. However if these two and their scenes hadn’t been in the movie, it still would have been a funny movie.

The Bad:

• Billy is a character that has a lot of promise yet never is able to get there. Always dishing out words of wisdom from the 80’s pop-culture of knowledge stored in his head yet never one to follow his own words until shove comes to push.

The Geeky:

• Google! You get a look at the real Mountain View campus and life style of the employees with Nap-Pods (a quiet zone to rest), free food, and real games of the Harry Potter Quidditch.