The Internship 2013

Critics score:
34 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Christy Lemire, ChristyLemire.com: Similar to Eddie Murphy's hard right turn from daring and profane comedy to family-friendly romps, Vaughn and Wilson have gone all soft and gooey here. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: There are plenty of films out there competing for your money ... 'The Internship' doesn't even deserve a part-time gig ... Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: A big-studio release that, from start to gaga finish, is a hosanna to a single company, its products, philosophy and implicit politics. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The director, Shawn Levy, and the writers, Mr. Vaughn and Jared Stern, have dreamed up a feel-good comedy that plays like a demo reel of deja views. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Levy's so busy showing us the riderless cars and cheery Google bikes, he forgets to have his movie make any sense. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: The pic's unwavering charm keeps it afloat. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: Product placement is one thing; building a whole movie around the glorification of a multinational corporation is something else entirely. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: A too-long, one-note affair, predictably following the patterns of any fish-out-of-water comedy you can think of. Read more

Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press: The premise, like the whole movie, is far-fetched but enjoyable. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Here's why Google is so successful: It's figured out a way for Twentieth Century Fox to make a two-hour Google commercial disguised as a summer comedy. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Wedding Crashers it's not, but the stars still make an agreeable pair, schooling their young colleagues on how to get blasted at a strip club and, in return, learning what HTML is. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It feels 20 minutes over-full at least. Cut out half of the "Flashdance" and "X-Men" references, and you're halfway there. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Google, the corporate entity, is so lovingly portrayed that the film itself resembles nothing so much as a massive product tie-in. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: A feature-length chunk of product placement masquerading as a comedy of teamwork and aspiration. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Today's weather forecast in Mountain View? Giddy with a chance of delirious. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This is the biggest product placement in history, with the Google brand treated as something we should all happily bow down before. There's something seriously disturbing in this. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: The Internship doesn't break any new comedic ground...But it's an amiable, occasionally laugh-out-loud fish-out-of-water tale that gently mocks our modern technological age while simultaneously embracing it. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: A pleasant collection of mild laughs. Read more

William Goss, Film.com: A Google commercial disguised as every other campus comedy ever made, with party-hearty nonsense and fish-out-of-water antics tempered down to PG-13 levels for maximum mediocrity. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: You don't need a heart to like this movie. You need an MBA. Read more

Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter: A good premise and a good cast flounder in search of a wittier script. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: It's a one-liner forged into a two-hour joke. Read more

Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News: Somehow much -- if certainly not all -- of the film works. Levy largely avoids the cynical and the crude, which is refreshing. Some bits are legitimately funny. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: It's a well-timed comedy about unemployment, technology and the generation gap, and its comforting main message is that the world will always need the kind of guy known as a people person. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The film becomes just one big product placement, with callow co-stars and by-the-numbers plotting. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Who let an unfunny, irritatingly acted two-hour commercial for Google onto multiplex screens? Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Director Shawn Levy's work has, as always, all the edge of a tub of margarine - he's the guy who did "Night at the Museum." And "The Internship" has the air of a promotional video for Google. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: Like many an intern, this sweet, negligible comedy, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as Google's oldest interns, doesn't live up to its potential. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: [It] would be kind of charming ... if this Google-recruitment film, this 119-minute commercial for Googliness, weren't so downright creepy. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Everything about it feels stale: the actors, the story, the comedy, everything. And, to make matters worse, that everything goes on for an interminable two hours. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The Internship takes a padded two hours to tell a thin story that buries its charm in emo-mongering and Google plugs. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: What do you get when you combine the dumbest and most formulaic kind of Hollywood dude comedy with the most smug and self-congratulatory grade of information-economy arrogance? Read more

Cynthia Dickison, Minneapolis Star Tribune: This is a movie that skates by on the sheer likability of its stars; there are genuine laughs in the script co-written by Vaughn. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The setting is a simulacrum of real life circa 2013. The user has a choice of avatars, including virtual-reality versions of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson that can reproduce the humor of "Wedding Crashers" with 65 percent accuracy. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Though by no means a good movie, The Internship floats along for fairly well for about half its length, thanks to the easy interplay between the two stars and a certain melancholic topicality. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The Internship is a big wet kiss to Google wrapped in a buddy comedy that asks us to believe that nobody over 40 knows anything about computers or the online universe. Read more

Guy Lodge, Time Out: It's a testament to the duo's jazzy comic chemistry that they wring some laughs from this dated, frankly sinister premise. Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: A movie sorely bereft of ideas, laughs and justification for the comic duo's undifferentiating self-regard. Read more

Mick LaSalle, Hearst Newspapers: The Internship just might be the saddest movie of 2013. That few will realize this makes it even sadder. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson may be the worst interns since Monica Lewinsky. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: A movie so desperately unfunny it makes you want to slit your wrists ... Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: One of those movies that milks its stars' inherent charisma for as long as it can, but it does so mainly because it has little else. Read more

Jen Chaney, Washington Post: The fact that this overlong, often preposterous comedy succeeds at all (which it does, only occasionally) proves that the Vaughn/Wilson charm can still work a measure of magic. Read more