The Intern

THE INTERN (12)

D: Nancy Meyers

Warner Bros/Ratpac-Dune/Waverly (Nancy Meyers & Suzanne Farwell)

US 2015

121 mins

Comedy

W: Nancy Meyers

DP: Stephen Goldblatt

Ed: Robert Leighton

Mus: Theodore Shapiro

Robert DeNiro (Ben Whittaker), Anne Hathaway (Jules Ostin), Rene Russo (Fiona), Anders Holm (Matt), Andrew Rannells (Cameron)

The Intern is a genuine surprise, insofar that it's much better than I believe it had any right to be, although I was originally only expecting a gender twist on The Devil Wears Prada.

Robert DeNiro plays a widowed retiree who takes a senior internship at a media company and is appointed as an assistant to the CEO (Anne Hathaway), who is a bit of a control freak with her own personal & business problems.

The film works mostly due to the interplay of DeNiro & Hathaway, who share an excellent screen partnership despite there being no hint of romance between them.

The film perhaps could have been 15-20 minutes shorter had it lost a silly heist subplot that doesn't amount to much and takes away from the central themes of the film, the collaboration between two fine actors in their element and a rather passive-aggressive insinuation of the differences between male generations & DeNiro's character being of a type of gentleman severely lacking in modern times, replaced by boys who have never really grown up. Despite this, the film doesn't come off as preachy, bitter or overly feminist, and is all the better due to this.  My only issues were a couple of silly moments which seem out of place & the fact that the company seems too nicey-nicey to be considered a legitimate business.

6/10