Review: The Intern

Robert De Niro plays a 70 year-old widower who has had enough of retirement and on a whim decides to answer a job ad for a hip online fashion website that just happens to be looking for elderly interns. Yep. He even manages to get paired up with the company’s founder, Anne Hathaway. Unfortunately for De Niro, Hathaway is a little creeped out by the elderly (the intern program wasn’t really her idea), and is such a workaholic that she rarely seems to have anything for De Niro to do. However, he slowly manages to impress her, whether it’s pointing out that her driver is drinking on the job (and subsequently takes over driving duties himself), or helping Hathaway’s stressed out PA (Christina Scherer) with her workload. When Hathaway realises that her marriage to Anders Holm (they have a young daughter as well) is clearly straining, Hathaway is forced to look into looking at hiring a new CEO to take off some of her workload. Meanwhile, De Niro starts a relationship with the company’s in-house masseuse, played by Rene Russo. Linda Lavin plays a lonely neighbour who has a thing for De Niro, Adam DeVine a co-worker, and Celia Weston is one of the other elderly interns.

 

If you can get past the frankly unconvincing premise, you’ll like this 2015 flick from writer-director Nancy Meyers (“What Women Want”, “Something’s Gotta Give”) a bit more than I did. I like Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, and they bring quite a lot of good with them here. However, I never quite got past the seriously dopey premise, and that’s a shame.

 

Firstly, the good. Robert De Niro is hardly at his best here, but he plays a nice, mild-mannered old man for a change. He’s actually really sweet and likeable, and it was nice to see. He’s easily the best thing here. Anne Hathaway, at least to people who aren’t irrationally jealous of her, is an innately likeable actress. That’s important here because she’s playing a character who isn’t immediately ingratiating. She’s playing a workaholic who feels uncomfortable around the elderly. I mean, I know Hathaway is divisive, but think of it this way: Katherine Heigl could’ve gotten the role. Would you have wanted that? No, of course not. Hathaway is the perfect person to play a workaholic but also someone who will eventually soften up, she really kinda nails it I think. Rene Russo is given an absolutely appalling role here, playing a supposed in-house masseuse, which is just absurd and offensive. However, because she’s a wonderful and underrated actress who has good chemistry with De Niro, you don’t end up minding so much. There’s a particularly funny bit where De Niro brings a date (Russo) to a funeral. I also enjoyed the more brief work by Linda Lavin, Celia Weston, and Christina Scherer, the latter of whom nearly steals the show. I was less enamoured with the frankly creepy-looking Adam DeVine, who is probably a real sweetheart, but gives off similar ‘stranger danger’ vibes to me as Clark Duke (“Hot Tub Time Machine”) does.

 

Ultimately, the script brings this one down a peg. It’s all too quirky for the sake of it, with hiring old people, and Hathaway riding a bike indoors like no person on the planet Earth. I simply didn’t believe in what I was seeing at a most basic plot level. If any of this is actually plausible, Meyers didn’t convince me of it, through no fault of the cast who try their best. In fact, I’m not entirely certain that Meyers believed in the premise, either.

 

If you can get past the awful premise, this is a nice film. Nicer than I was expecting, actually. However, it’s mostly due to the fine work of its two stars (De Niro is quite good at being affable), and even they couldn’t quite convince me that this was more than just watchable. It’s also a good 20-25 minutes too damn long.

 

Rating: C+