Prime Time: The Intern (2015)

I am happy to admit it. When I saw that The Intern was written and directed by Nancy Meyers, and when I saw the poster that had Robert De Niro looking slightly awkward standing alongside Anne Hathaway,  I wasn’t ever in a rush to see it. But it became a film that I kept being reminded of over the past few years, with many people commenting that it is better than you might think.

I have to agree. The Intern is better than you might think. It’s predictable and fairly safe throughout, although that helps the most risqué gag to become even more hilarious when it happens, but it’s sweet and funny, and there are a couple of good points made throughout (about the tougher treatment of successful women and the unfair dismissal of elderly citizens with a lot of life experience to share with others).

De Niro plays Ben, a widower who is a bit bored while trying to fill his days. He sees an advert for a “senior intern” vacancy with an online clothing retailer company, applies, and soon finds himself in the midst of a whole new world. Although, as becomes clear, it isn’t actually THAT new to Ben, considering his work history and the values he holds dear. It may not be the experience he hoped for though, considering the fact that company owner, Jules (Anne Hathaway), isn’t convinced that she needs an intern.

If you think you know how The Intern is going to play out from start to finish then you would be correct. Ben wants to find more from his life, although the satisfaction of doing a good job well remains high on his list of priorities. He also has to learn some new skills to be more effective in the modern workplace. Jules has to accept help from others when she needs it, and has to find a way to strengthen her resolve when others start to doubt her capabilities. There are a couple of fun surprises though, whether they take the shape of the aforementioned risqué gag or an unwelcome character development that will have you hissing at a certain someone as if they were a panto villain.

Meyers may not make movies to suit everyone, especially if you’re not into movies that seem designed more for the entertainment and amusement of women, but there’s no denying that she does what she does damn well. She knows what she is doing, and the final result is always polished and balanced between moments of fun and moments of obvious emotional manipulation. In line with her other directorial features, this is a sweet and optimistic film that feels like a good viewing choice to make during more cynical and dark times.

De Niro is great in his main role here, not having to overdo any comedy as viewers get to see his character being sharper and more capable than people assume. He’s fastidious, he presents some old-fashioned values in a way that manages to convince others of their worth, and he convinces as a valuable asset to the company. Hathaway is very good, although slightly hindered by the trials and tribulations thrown at her character throughout the second half of the film. The two leads make a great team though, complementing one another without immediately realising how well they fit. Adam Devine, Zach Pearlman, and Christina Scherer are other work colleagues (Scherer a standout as a swamped assistant who rarely gets the recognition she deserves), Rene Russo adds some romantic potential, and is always welcome in any movie role, and Anders Holm plays Matt, the “house husband” supporting his very busy wife and looking after their young daughter (a winning performance from JoJo Kushner) for most of every day.

I’ve already written far more about this than required, but this was one of the biggest surprises from my viewing choices last week. Sweet, fun, funny, and maybe even a little inspiring, I would recommend people watch The Intern if they want to spend a couple of hours in the company of a mixed bag of characters all able to make you smile for a little while.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Out-Laws (2023)

While I was pleasantly surprised to see that The Out-Laws, the latest comedy feature to drop on Netflix, had a very reasonable 95-minute runtime, I was even more surprised to soon discover that it was also quite funny. A lot of that depends on your tolerance for Adam Devine, who does his usual schtick here (but dialled down slightly), but if you enjoy the leads then you should have some fun with this.

Devine plays Owen Browning, a happy bank manager who is about to get married to Parker McDermott (Nina Dobrev). Although Owen has never met Parker's parents, they end being able to change their plans and ensure a visit just in time for the wedding. That means Owen has to try and bond with Billy (Pierce Brosnan) and Lilly (Ellen Barkin) in a very short space of time, which means . . . alcohol. After an evening of drinking and conversation, Owen spends his next workday hungover, and his day gets much worse when his bank is robbed. The robbers knew every part of his security system, and they seemed very familiar with Own. Could the prospective in-laws be bank-robbing outlaws?

If I had looked into the filmographies of everyone involved here then I doubt I would have given it a chance already. It's the first feature from writer Evan Turner, and the first non-sequel feature from writer Ben Zazove (who previously helped to pen Gnomeo & Juliet 2: Sherlock Gnomes). Director Tyler Spindel is a name I should have recognised, having given us the awfulness of The Wrong Missy back in 2020. Despite their dubious backgrounds, however, everyone comes together well to make something well-paced and full of decent gags. The emphasis is much more on the comedy than any action, but it sketches out enough details throughout to keep things feeling as plausible as they need to be.

While Devine is fun in his main role, he's helped enormously by sharing so much of the screentime with Brosnan and Barkin, both seeming to enjoy themselves amidst all the silliness. Brosnan is particularly fun, using his twinkly-eyed Irish charm to full effect, but he and Barkin are always very much a couple who complete one another. Dobrev does okay in her smaller role, predictably placed in danger at least once, and Michael Rooker takes on the role of the determined cop out to catch the bank robbers, and suspecting that it could have been an inside job. Poorna Jagannathan is an entertaining villain, although not really ever very threatening, and the rest of the supporting cast provides some great additional value. Not only do you get fun little moments for Dean Winters, Lil Rel Howery, Blake Anderson, and Lauren Lapkus (a LOT more amusing here than she was in The Wrong Missy, but you get some effortless scene-stealing from the wonderful Richard Kind and Julie Hagerty, playing Neil and Margie Browning, Owen's parents.

Surprisingly good for this kind of thing, certainly compared to a number of other Netflix comedy films that they've released over the past few years, The Out-Laws is as easy to enjoy as it is easy to predict. It's also a very easy one to choose when you're looking for a simple bit of fun entertainment to while away some time. I doubt we'll remember it a few years from now, as is the way with most of the streaming content that somehow feels less substantial than the films and shows released via more traditional means (e.g. does anyone else remember Hemlock Grove?), but it's here now, and that's the main thing. Apparently.

7/10

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Magic Camp (2020)

I think I would have reached the inevitable conclusion eventually, but it was about a third of the way into Magic Camp when I realised exactly what it is. My girlfriend had been listening to my viewing choice and asked if Jack Black was a lead character. It was not. It was Adam Devine, playing a magician named Andy. Except he isn’t doing his magic act. He is a driver. And ends up given a chance to shape some young minds at the titular Magic Camp he had so much success at in his youth. The kids who end up being led/taught by Adam are a mismatched bunch who need to find their confidence and tap into their potential. Magic Camp is School Of Rock, but with magic in place of rock music. 

Andy is a main character, the adult encouraged to remember what he so loved about a life full of magic by the camp owner (Jeffrey Tambor). The actual REAL main character is Theo (Nathaniel Logan McIntyre), a kid who is a real whizz with a deck of cards. He also really misses his father, who passed away, and thinks that both his mother and little brother don’t sense the wonder and skill as much as his father always would. Lessons are to be learned, the various kids involved in the storyline make friends and enemies, and Andy gets to air some of his grievances with ex-partner Kristina Darkwood (Gillian Jacobs), even if he perhaps can nowadays admit that Abracaduo was a terrible name for their act.

Although it took about seven people to write this thing (how? how does something so formulaic take seven main credited writers??), Magic Camp benefits from being directed by Mark Waters. If you recognise the name, that's because he has probably directed a few films you have enjoyed. The House Of Yes, Freaky Friday (2003), Mean Girls, and, errrr, Mr. Popper's Penguins are some of them. He's well-suited to material that focuses on the journey of the kids while also allowing for plenty of time with the older characters sorting out their lives. The script is decent, don't get me wrong, I just struggle to think of seven people hammering it into shape.

Devine is someone I can like or loathe, depending on the movie. He's in good form here, working well with the kids. McIntyre is a decent lead, playing the usual notes that any Disney child actor is required to play, and Jacobs is perfectly fine, if wasted, in her supporting role. Tambor is a lot of fun, appearing at just the right times to offer pearls of wisdom, and Rochelle Aytes and Aldis Hodge both do well enough as Theo's loving parents, one being deceased and shown in flashback only. Most of the young cast do well, but I'll single out Isabella Crovetti, who made me properly laugh with her turn, playing a young girl who is obsessed with the idea of performing magic tricks with bunny rabbits. Cole Sand is also a LOT of fun as Nathan, a kid who can actually work magic with numbers.

It's all very paint-by-numbers stuff, but it's all done in a nice and entertaining way. And the moments showing magic being performed feel authentic. Everyone gets their moment, a number of running gags have solid pay-offs, and the predictable ending surely indicates a sequel coming along some time (that I will absolutely watch).

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Isn't It Romantic (2019)

When I first heard about Isn't It Romantic I thought that it was going to cover the same ground as They Came Together. It wasn't. Instead, I got something that felt like a cross between I Feel Pretty and The Final Girls (which was, funnily enough, also from this director, Todd Strauss-Schulson).

Rebel Wilson plays a young woman named Natalie. Natalie is an architect, although a lot of people around her seems to treat her as a general dogsbody. Natalie is also quite the cynic, and has been taught from a young age (as we see in the opening scene) to always keep in mind that rom-coms are just nonsense, full of things that would never happen to someone like herself. Which makes it worse when, one day after struggling with a mugger and running into a metal beam, Natalie wakes up in hospital, and wakes up in the middle of what seems to be her own romantic comedy. Will this allow her to learn some kind of valuable lesson, or is it just going to be an endurance test until she can figure out a way back to normality.

A lot of Rebel Wilson performances depend very much on how you feel about Rebel Wilson. I tend to enjoy her work but each subsequent movie highlights the fact that she always plays things the same way. That can work, and you could say the same of her male co-star here (Adam Devine, who plays the smug moron-cum-douchebag in 90% of the movies he has done), but it's not something to rely on forever. She's fine here, and given decent support from a core group that includes Devine (the best friend who might end up being more than that), Liam Hemsworth (very . . .  "beguiling" . . .  as the hunky love interest), Priyanka Chopra (woman who Devine falls for, providing standard complication), Betty Gilpin (friendly work colleague in the real world, acidic workplace enemy underused in the rom-com world), and Brandon Scott Jones (popping up to be the subgenre-requisite gay BFF).

No one in the cast stands out as a bad choice. The big problem here lies elsewhere. The script. Written by Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katie Silberman, Isn't It Romantic has some funny and clever moments here and there, especially when it comes to censored swearing and transitions that imply sex without showing anything happening, but everything centres on a central idea that doesn't work. Wilson knows all of the tropes, and rolls her eyes at all of them, yet she goes along with them all while commenting on her displeasure. This allows the film to underline everything in every scene, making it less fun. Not only do viewers have everything spoon-fed to them while being bashed on the head with a rom-com rubber mallet, they also get constantly reminded that what they're watching is nonsense and (essentially) without any value. Where the movies mentioned in the first paragraph had a certain sweetness and optimism at the heart of them, whether you liked them or not, this has a cynicism in line with the main character, and that sours what could have been a very enjoyable rom-com that wore some layers of cool meta clothing.

Strauss-Schulson does a good job with the direction, ensuring that this always feels like your standard rom-com, from the visual style of each scene to frequent use of uplifting pop standards on the soundtrack. The film feels infused by every modern rom-com, helped there by the script, but nothing can quite outweigh the misjudged tone. I would have liked to laugh along with this film, instead it feels like they're pointing at things for you to laugh at.

There are laughs to be had, and a couple of fun musical numbers, but this is ultimately a disappointment, despite making a very good point during the grand finale.

5/10

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Game Over, Man! (2018)

Oh boy. There's a fun idea at the heart of Game Over, Man! but it's one that is constantly being buried under a mountain of atrociousness.

Adam Devine, Anders Holm, and Blake Anderson star as Alexxx, Darren, and Joel, three male workers in the housekeeping department of some big hotel building. They're terrible at their job, and not in an amusing way. They're just so bad that you have to wonder how they have stayed in employment for more than half a day. Always looking for the chance to sell one of their big (and terrible) ideas to someone, the boys get themselves very excited when they know that their building is about to host a party for an ultra-rich celeb named Bey (Utkarsh Ambudkar). Unfortunately, there's one man (Jamie Demetriou) trying to keep unwanted members of the public away from Bae. And there are a bunch of criminals (led by Neal McDonough) about to crash the party and extort money from Bae, which gives our hapless lead characters the chance to become heroes.

If you like jokes about sperm, more gratuitous penis shots than any other comedy, even more gratuitous cameos, and a very open-minded approach to a wide variety of sexual preferences that would feel admirably progressive if every main instance of it mattering wasn't being used as a plot device, or for an easy joke, then this is the film for you.

I like Devine, and I like his usual douchebag persona, so I enjoyed some of his work here. I can't say the same about Holm (who also wrote the terrible script) and Anderson. There are hardly any other performers that I DID enjoy, sadly, with the exceptions of Demetriou, McDonough, and Rhona Mitra, and I just enjoyed Mitra because I hadn't seen her in anything for a while. Chloe Bridges tries hard, but isn't given enough to do, and Daniel Stern is stuck with the kind of role that a decade or so ago would have gone to someone like Chris Elliott.

Director Kyle Newacheck does an acceptable job, I'll grudgingly admit, with a decent way of shooting the action moments and the gags. It's that script, always that script, that undermines everything, feeling very much like something written by a bunch of drunk friends on a big night out who decided that they would very much like to star in an action comedy, but with as many unfunny jokes crammed in there as possible. I am sure that some will find the content here tasteless, while just as many others will find it hilarious. I just think it was all a bit too juvenile and didn't work with the action movie template.

This is advertised as being from the people who brought you Workaholics. Well, all I can say is that I won't be rushing to check out Workaholics. I also can't believe we get something like this while we are still deprived of a film version of One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night. Netflix (because, yes, this is another one from them), start adapting Christopher Brookmyre works and you may regain some goodwill after recent mis-steps.

3/10

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When We First Met (2018)

Noah (Adam Devine) falls in love with Avery (Alexandra Daddario), but  has to resign himself to the fact that although they had a great first date together, it ended with a hug and nothing else happened between them. She then met, and fell in love with, the perfect Ethan (Robbie Amell). It's been three years since that fateful time, and Avery and Ethan are getting engaged, which leads Noah to get horribly drunk and then encounter a magical photobooth that he once used with Avery, which takes him back to his first time meeting her. Can he change the outcome, and will he like what happens?

Having seen many people mention that this is a romcom riff on Groundhog Day, I can tell you that it's not. Not really. It's a romcom riff on The Butterfly Effect. There's a difference between the two. And that difference is big when it comes to how the film plays out, because When We First Met could have been a lot better than it is, and a lot funnier, if it was hewing closer to the former than the latter.

The cast don't help. As much as I like Devine, I don't think of him as the best choice for a rom-com lead, although he doesn't do too bad here. Daddario is also fine, but she's the sort of actress I can always imagine being bumped for any number of better actresses. Amell does well with his fairly limited role, and Shelley Hennig is decent enough as Carrie, Avery's roommate. It's just a shame that her character is twisted to put together a third act that doesn't feel in line with the rest of the film. Andrew Bachelor fairs a bit better, playing Noah's best friend, Max.

The script by John Whittington doesn't have much going for it beyond the potential fun of the central premise, which is squandered at almost every opportunity. This could have crammed in so many fun failures as Noah tried to change his life. We instead just get a few specific scenarios as Noah is rushed to his big life lesson. Director Ari Sandel doesn't do anything to improve upon the script, relying on the talents of his leads, which again makes it easier to reach the conclusion that there were probably better options than Devine and Daddario to put in the lead roles.

Despite the problems, When We First Met isn't actually a bad film. It's just an average film. There aren't enough laughs, you don't REALLY care that much about the characters, the time travel is fun but not used as well as it should be, and it's passable entertainment when it could have been something much more enjoyable.

5/10

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