The Intern

Dir: Nancy Meyers

2015

**

I judge each film I watch by the acting, direction, script and story. Not by the sex of the writer or director. It's been suggested in many news outlets that The Intern's poor reception is due to the fact that the majority of film reviewers are male. I find this to be nonsense. The Intern is clearly an exploration of society’s opinion of successful working women/mothers. Anne Hathaway plays a young CEO and founder of a highly successful e-commerce start-up company called Jules, who works long hours while her husband stays at home and looks after their young daughter. It is suggested to Jules by her chief adviser that an outreach program to hire senior interns would be beneficial to the company and although she's sceptical, she agrees. In walks Robert DeNiro. DeNiro plays Ben, a retired widow who finds passing the time generally difficult. His introductory narration on the trouble with retirement is the film's highlight. Ben is keen, hardworking and admired by his younger co-workers almost instantly. Before long, Jules' adviser suggests Ben works as her personal assistant and while she isn't happy about it initially, she's soon won over by his calming demeanour and professional influence. The acting is rather good and the script is too and there are some glimmers of excellence throughout but for every step forward, the story takes three steps back. Jules mind works at a million miles an hour and has been told to hand over certain responsibilities to a CEO outside of the company. Essentially, giving up her overall influence for the case of her company and her lifestyle. Woman are not treated equally in the world today, I've seen many examples of women been treated unfairly due to their sex and their want to reproduce. It is unacceptable, so a film to empower women in the workplace is a great thing. It really shouldn't be a thing in 2015 but sadly it still is. So well done to Nancy Meyers for her good intentions but I'm afraid she failed miserably in getting the message across. Her level headed adviser whom she relies so heavily on is a man, Ben becomes her friend, college and father within just a few weeks and he is also, a man. Her wonderful stay at home husband, who she clearly relies heavily upon and who gave up a successful career (because only one parent is allowed to work in this day and age) cheats on her because she works hard. How dare she. Jules comes across as scatty, fickle, heavily dependent (particularly on men) and not really as clever as a founder and CEO of a large and successful company would be. How is this empowering of women? Sure, Ben tells her she is strong, powerful and more than capable but it seems like she only believes this when told by an old white guy. If that weren't enough, Meyers throws in a dick joke. Upon receiving a massage in the office, Ben gets a full on boner, courteously covered with a newspaper by his young colleagues. Just as the script gets to raw facts about sexism in the workplace there is a dick joke, a tiresome age comparison between Ben and his young co-workers or a burglary scene involving the retrieval of a mistakenly sent email that is more suited to a wacky straight to video sequel of a national lampoon film than a comment on equality. Do I dislike this film because Nancy Meyers is a woman? No, I don't, nor do I recognize the term 'chick flick' as a valid genre term. I disliked The Intern because only a quarter of the film dealt with the subject successfully, while the rest of the movie was made up of clichés, stereotype, poor writing and scenes that no director worth their weight would even dream of keeping in the finished piece, especially when said director wrote and produced it.