The Intern
“The Intern” is a nice movie about nice people, living in a world in which everyone is nice. It leaves audiences with a nice feeling, and yet with another feeling sneaking into the background, like the slightly bad taste that follows a sweet drink. It’s the feeling of having seen something phony.
But “phony” is too strong a word for this. “The Intern” was written and directed by Nancy Meyers and in no way seems to lie or pander. It seems the product of a sincere vision, but what a vision. It’s hard to know what’s the right response — admiration or perplexity, maybe a mix of both — to see an imaginative world made entirely of smooth surfaces. For sure, it’s some kind of achievement to make really sweet people entertaining for two whole hours.
Throughout the movie, we’re told that Jules, an Internet clothing entrepreneur, is one tough character, but at her most unkind moments, she’s slightly curt — that’s about the worst that can be said for her. For the most part, she just seems like Anne Hathaway as we usually find her, smiling brightly and occasionally bursting into tears. We find out that Jules started her business a year and a half ago and now employs over 200 people. It’s typical of this movie — even the business environment is fantastic.
Most of the action is seen through the eyes of the title character, a 70-year-old retired man who gets hired as a “senior intern” at Jules’ company. Ben (Robert De Niro) is a widower, but we’re told that his late wife was amazing, and within days of his start at the clothing company, the on-staff masseuse is coming on to him. Ben has a charmed life: The masseuse is played by Rene Russo.
Even if you didn’t see the coming-attractions trailer or the advertisement (“Experience never gets old”), you’d have a pretty good idea where this movie has to go. The artistry of “The Intern” is that Meyers figures out how to make the inevitable interesting, or at least interesting enough. We are made to feel, almost by instinct, without really being told, that Ben has things to teach Jules, and we’re also made to care that Jules learns them.
The writer-director doesn’t give De Niro much to work with, but she probably knew that and consequently found an actor who could make up the difference. Ben’s life, as written, is little more than a series of cliches, but De Niro goes through the movie saying a lot just by the way he looks at people. It’s written into the script that Ben is observant, and in De Niro’s gaze we see something we don’t usually see — the pity of the old for the young, for all their emotional torments, avoidable mistakes and illusion of infinite time.
As for Hathaway, it would be easy to say that she goes too soft on Jules and tries to make the audience love her, but the truth is, she can only work with the script that she has. On the few occasions when she gets to show a darker side or open up into the character’s pain, Hathaway does it. And she doesn’t overdo it.
Later, looking back on “The Intern,” you may wonder if the relationship between Jules and Ben was just smoke and mirrors. Most of their conversations consist of little but her talking and him listening, and their one scene of abandoned rapport — on an airplane flying first class — has no dialogue. It’s just a montage scene of laughing and carrying on, but we have no idea what they’re saying.
But so what? Movies are smoke and mirrors. They’re all about seduction, and their job is not to be worthy of belief, but to make you want to believe. The success of this film may ride entirely on the alchemy of these particular actors, but whatever is carrying it, “The Intern” gets there.