Jackson Free Press

Perspective is easy to lose if you're a 40-something sales representative who loses his or her job, or a 20-something college graduate with a quarter-million dollars of debt and no job prospects, despite being at the top of his or her class. In these stressful situations, perspective often gets pushed to the bottom of the heap, with fear drowning out any hopeful prospects.

"The Internship," starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson (who successfully teamed together in the smash hit "The Wedding Crashers"), does what only the best comedies can do; it puts a smiley face on tragic circumstances and turns perspective from doom and gloom to optimism. It's about a positive attitude, which may seem trite to some, but when you throw in references to growing up in the '70s and life lessons learned from 1983 hit "Flashdance," this film is a therapeutic belly laugh.

The movie opens on Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) working on their sales pitch. They riff back and forth on their client's personal data. Nine-year-old daughter who is a gymnast. Check. Likes to show family photos. Check. During the meeting, they weave in these facts and are on the brink of cementing the sale when they get a blow. They no longer have jobs. They didn't get the memo, but their client did. Their boss (John Goodman) doesn't apologize for his oversight. He cashed in early and calls them "dinosaurs" as he escorts them out of the business. No one needs watches, he tells them. Technology has made Billy and Nick irrelevant.

What to do?

Billy surfs the Web for jobs. And then, as dramatically depicted by director Shawn Levy, we see Billy's face lit up by the computer screen and the shining word "Google." Billy calls Nick with the plan. They are going to apply for an internship at Google. True, they need to be enrolled in college, but Billy has taken care of that detail. They are officially enrolled at Phoenix University and, improbably, Billy and Nick land spots in Google's competitive internship program.

Google-land rivals, and maybe even trumps, Disneyland. Cars without drivers cruise the Google campus. A giant amusement park slide sits in the main reception area. Food is free, and foodie Billy sighs with pleasure. The kick, of course, is that Google is a tech company, and Billy and Nick are people-pleasers, not digital-tech geniuses.

So how can this work for our two funny guys? By my favorite word of all, guaranteed to get a groan from some: "teamwork." And you can predict which team Billy and Nick get on. Will it be the "A" team, led by some butt-kissing preppie (Max Minghella) with a snobbish affectation? Or the losers, including a hot-talking Indian girl (Tiya Sircar), a home-schooled Asian kid (Tobit Raphael) whose Tiger mom bullied him into perfection, a white boy discontent (Dylan O'Brien) and a team leader (Josh Brener) who is out of touch with cool?

Many critics have panned this movie because it infomercializes Google--a valid criticism. The movie paints a utopian picture of Google and its campus. Senior Google executives vetted the script, which means some sanitization of anything remotely controversial. But the filmmakers aren't trying to hide the ties to Google. It's so obvious that you either go along with it or not.

I enjoyed this film more than most this lackluster summer. I laughed so hard at the incongruity of the circumstances two old-school guys taking an internship at Google for the summer. The banter between Vaughn and Wilson is priceless.

And the message is not overly complicated. It can be summed up from a line from "Flashdance": "When you give up on the dream, you die." So why not go for the dream? Haters can continue to hate, but the rest of us are going to remember that steel worker who had the dream.