The new buddy comedy The Internship pairs Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn for the first time since 2005’s Wedding Crashers.
They are still wild and crazy guys, but this time out they are unemployed wild and crazy guys pushed out of their jobs by technology.
Unable to get a foothold in the new media field they take intern jobs at Google.
“We’re looking at some sort of mental Hunger Games against a bunch of genius kids for just a handful of jobs,” says Wilson.
Many movies have used unemployment as the starting point for storytelling.
In Lost in America, rated one of Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies, Albert Brooks plays a successful advertising executive who gets fired for insulting his boss.
Free from the shackles of employment he goes all carpe diem and convinces his wife Linda (Julie Hagerty) to leave her job and explore the country in a Winnebago. When they lose their nest egg on a Las Vegas stop over they reenter the work force as a crossing guard and manager at a Der Wienerschnitzel restaurant, respectively.
As the movie ends they hit the road once again, hoping to reclaim their old jobs and lifestyles.
It would be hard to imagine a more toxic workplace than the real estate office in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Encouragement comes in the form of verbal abuse — most of which can’t be printed in a family newspaper — and a motivational sales contest offering three prizes.
The top seller wins a Cadillac Eldorado.
“Second prize is a set of steak knives,” says Blake (Alec Baldwin). “Third prize is you’re fired.”
Playwright David Mamet based the original play on his experiences working in a real estate office in the 1970s.
Finally, The Full Monty is a comedy that takes a serious look at the effects of unemployment on the individual and the community.
Set in Sheffield, England, it’s the story of six men, most unemployed steel workers, who come up with a unique way to pay the bills.
They decide to form a Chippendale dancer style group, separating themselves from the pack by going “the full monty” and go completely stark naked.
While filming, the actors agreed to go completely nude in front of 400 extras provided they only had to do it once.
They got it in one take, and according to Roger Ebert, the inspiring and revealing final scene “was applauded at the screening I attended.”
This weekend Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg co-star as a DEA agent and an undercover Naval Intelligence officer who are investigating one another in 2 Guns. Each think the other is on the take from the mob, but eventually must work together to get to the truth.
This action-comedy was directed by Contraband helmer Baltasar Kormakur the movie promises more action than comedy, putting it at odds with the original plan for the film.
Conceived as a vehicle for Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn after the success of Wedding Crashers, the movie was originally meant to take advantage of the comedic chemistry between the two, but slowly morphed into something else as it made its way to Wahlberg and Washington.
It joins a long list of movies to change tone as they swap casts.
We think of Beverly Hills Cop as the hilarious Eddie Murphy movie about a streetwise Detroit cop displaced to hoity-toity Los Angeles. Initially however, the movie was meant to star Sylvester Stallone, who, aside from Oscar or Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, is better known for breaking jaws than busting guts. Comedy not being his thing, Stallone tried to rewrite the script to emphasize the action, which raised the budget and he was replaced.
Stallone also turned down the part of Jack Colton in the romantic action-adventure Romancing the Stone and was replaced by Michael Douglas
Unlike Stallone, Bill Murray can flit back-and-forth between drama and comedy with ease, still it would have seemed odd to see him as Dr. Wren in Alien: Resurrection. The part was written for him, but when he passed it went to J.E. Freeman.
Stranger still was the casting for the crime comedy Legal Eagles. In the version we know Debra Winger plays defense lawyer Laura Kelly who becomes romantically involved with District Attorney Tom Logan, played by Robert Redford. Originally Winger’s character was written for Murray, who dropped out and forced massive rewrites.
Taxi Driver made Cybill Shepherd a star, but the part almost went to Farah Fawcett Majors because, producer Julia Phillips claims, director Martin Scorsese preferred Majors’ “shapely bottom.”
Finally, Daniel Day Lewis is an acting legend with five Oscar nominations and three wins to his credit, but imagine if he hadn’t turned down the roles of Zod in the recent Superman epic Man of Steel or Shakespeare in Love’s love interest, a part that went to Joseph Fiennes.
Is there a film title this year riper with pathos than The Break-Up? It seems like just yesterday that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were announcing that their Hollywood romance was on the rocks, generating screaming headlines in the tabloids. Now those headlines have been paraphrased into a movie title, released just a week after Aniston’s former flame has a child with his scarlet woman, Angelina Jolie. It’s almost as if the great publicist in the sky said, “OK, I’ll cut you a break here. Your last two movies have flopped so here is an ironic title and a serendipitous birth to stir up some hype. Good luck.”
The Break-Up is being marketed as a romantic comedy, but really it is more a battle of the sexes—make that exes—with more in common with The War of the Roses, a nasty divorce movie from a decade ago, than a traditional romantic comedy. Imagine if Ingmar Bergman had directed When Harry Met Sally.
The romance part of the film is dismissed early on with a montage of pictures of the couple in their salad days, holding hands, kissing, on vacation. The viewer gets the idea that they were once a happy pair, but fifteen minutes into the film after a screaming match following a disastrous dinner party their union is shattered. Brooke (Aniston) still loves Gary (Vaughn) but wants him to learn to respect her. He’s a man-child who doesn’t get it and their relationship frays into a he said/she said battle in which ownership of their beautiful condo becomes the main issue.
The movie has an odd tone, at once playing on the strengths of its stars—Vaughn is once again the fast-talking charmer, Aniston the pretty, girl-next-door type—while also playing them against type. Vaughn crosses the line from charmer to homophobic jerk, a guy so obnoxious the audience is actually happy during a scene in which he gets beaten up. Aniston effortlessly handles the comedic portion of her role and is quite good in the dramatic bits, but I’m not sure that given her recent real-life romantic history that audiences want to see Rachel… rather Aniston break down into tears over a man.
There are laughs here, particularly in the scenes between Vaughn and his Swingers’ co-star Jon Favreau, but they are generally followed by long stretches of uncomfortable tension. Because we see so little of the couple in the honeymoon phase of the relationship, when things go sour we don’t really care. It’s like watching strangers argue in a restaurant. You may be compelled to look in that train wreck kind of way, but ultimately it is unaffecting.
This is a perfect date movie if you plan on dumping the person you’re with when the movie is over.
The new buddy comedy The Internship pairs Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn for the first time since 2005’s Wedding Crashers.
