![]() But Jesus did this movie ever irritate me. ![]() And I guess I can't begrudge them the affection they obviously feel for De Niro and Hathaway, the former with his soothing serenity and the latter with her grinning-through-tears vulnerability. (Unlike Hoke Colburn, Ben never dusts his employer's light bulbs, but that's only because dust apparently ran screaming from every shiny, pristine, fastidiously art-directed surface.)īased on the heartiness of the laughter at my Thursday-night screening, the routine coos of " Aw-w-w-w!", and the occasional applause, The Intern's intergenerational wish-fulfillment is clearly hitting some viewers right in the sweet spot. (Considering how slowly she pedals her bicycle, from meeting to meeting, throughout her warehouse offices, you can't imagine how he could.) Yet Ben's paternal grace and old-school wisdom gradually win the respect of his much younger co-workers, and before you can say, "Mornin', Miss Daisy!", he's won Jules over, too, serving as her chauffeur and business-trip traveling companion, and gently guiding the frazzled CEO through one professional and emotional dilemma after another. At first, the overworked, type-A Jules wants little to do with Ben, presuming the hand-holding he'll require will just slow her down. The film's jokey premise - or rather, the premise that everyone on-screen initially treats as a joke - finds De Niro's 70-year-old retiree Ben assuming a senior-intern role for an online-shopping company led by Hathway's founder and CEO Jules. Heaven knows, though, that leads Robert De Niro and Anne Hathway at least try, and it's certainly refreshing to see The Intern's Right Man a platonic pal rather than a romantic ideal. But I'm going to be hard on it anyway, given that Meyers' mildly insulting sitcoms about strong, successful career women who are only truly fulfilled after Finding the Right Man are usually buoyed by ace performances ( Something's Gotta Give's Diane Kaeaton and Jack Nicholson It's Complicated's Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin), and this film just doesn't have 'em. Older audiences deserve comforting, pandering crap as much as everyone else, so I probably shouldn't be too hard on The Intern, especially because, with Nora Ephron's passing, writer/director Nancy Meyers is pretty much carrying the torch for Hollywood's all-too-rare female-centric dramedies detailing the personal costs of Having It All. ![]()
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