Vince Vaughn & Owen Wilson Goofing On Google Doesn’t Go Very Far

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THE INTERNSHIP (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2013)

Using the tried and true tropes of the slobs versus snobs/underdogs become winners formula, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson take on the ginormous corporation that is Google in this slightly funny, but completely disposal comedy.

But they don’t really take on Google, so much as kiss its ass by portraying it as a tech world Mecca that those well below retirement age, such as with the 40-something Vaughn and Wilson out on their asses after their boss (John Goodman) closes their company, would dream of having as their workplace.

As the not-so-tech savvy yet slick talking salesmen who wormed their way into an internship with the search engine empire, Vaughn and Wilson are looking to re-ignite the comic spark that made their previous collaboration, 2005's WEDDING CRASHERS, a huge hit, but like a lighter that you keep flicking but can’t get a full flame going, this effort should be tossed into the waste bin.

That’s not to say there are some legitimate laughs here and there, Vaughn’s power-riffing and Wilson’s way with a one-liner made me chuckle every now and then, but it’s as if they reached the minimum quota of sure-fire funny and thought it would suffice.

The funny bits are all up front such as a Skype interview Vaughn and Wilson do from a library with The Office’s B.J. Novak, in which the duo dance around their disqualifications amusingly, and the film also shoots its wad early by placing its Will Ferrell cameo (as a sleazy mattress salesman that Wilson briefly works for) in the first 15 minutes.

Not much interesting happens in THE INTERNSHIP after the mild chuckling dies down.

Vaughn and Wilson get together with a scruffy group of outcasts including Josh Brener, Dylan O'Brien, Tiya Sircar, and Tobit Raphael to compete against several other teams for the coveted award of employment at Google, and the challenges they tackle (creating a new app, developing call service skills, marketing a pizza restaurant) are dull sitcom-ish scenerios.

Max Minghella (THE SOCIAL NETWORK) is the chief antagonist, as the leader of a rival group of interns that he verbally abuses, and The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi as a snooty internship program leader looks down on our supposed heroes, but is mainly there to be a straight man to Vaughn.

In the obligatory scene in which the group needs to loosen up so they hit a bar for some partying shenanigans, there’s a predictable run-in with a group of blonde frat types headed by Brian F. Durkin, who the Woody Allen-ish Brener zings by calling Biff Tannen (a BACK TO THE FUTURE reference – will the kids today get it?) while he's hitting on a stripper (Jessica Szohr).


It’s another instance where the film feels like just an amalgam of set-pieces from a bunch of ‘80s comedies, like STRIPES and BACK TO SCHOOL.

There is the difference that while Bill Murray in STRIPES (and all his roles of the period) had what A.V. Club writer Phil Dyess-Nugent recently called his “signature fake sincerity” going on, and Vaughn, despite his motor-mouth show-biz hipster speak, actually is sincere.

Murray would tell you that you’re the best, schmoozing you all up, but then he’d be out the door once you’re on his side (or not).

Vaughn, in this movie, when he wants Mandvi to like him and be his friend, he means it and he won’t take no for an answer. It’s endearing, but hardly a trait that elevates this lame enterprise.

Director Levy has made a career out of mediocre comedy fare like this (See: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, THE PINK PANTHER remake, the NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM movies, or, better yet, don’t see them), so this one’s suckiness is no surprise.

With its bright primary-colored atmosphere, free food (Vaughn takes ample advantage of this perk), and its unconventional work environment, Google does indeed look like a worker’s paradise. However, the half-assed conventions of this movie just reduce it to a stylish backdrop behind a couple of wiseacres trying in vain to get down with youth computer culture.

If you love these guys and have to see THE INTERNSHIP because you thought WEDDING CRASHERS was the greatest movie ever, at least opt for a matinee. This almost 2 hour infomercial for Google and the continuing comic relevance of Vaughn and Wilson is seriously not worth a full price admission.

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CARS 2: The Film Babble Blog Review

CARS 2 (Dirs. John Lasseter & Brad Lewis, 2011)

CARS and its new sequel opening today, CARS 2, are the most commercial and formulaic films of all the Pixar productions. But that doesn't mean that they suck - no, they are both fairly entertaining animated kids flicks. It's just that this new entry in the franchise has a major problem that can be stated simply: too much Larry the Cable Guy.



Way too much.



As Tow Mater, the rusty redneck tow truck friend to Owen Wilson's Lightning McQueen, Larry the Cable Guy (man, I hate typing that - he'll be LCG from here on) has been promoted to the lead character here.



LCG gets mistakenly caught up in a secret spy mission involving Michael Caine as a British agent Aston Martin model (obviously 007-ish), and his partner in espionage Emily Mortimer, also a sleek European car outfitted with snazzy gadgets.



Meanwhile, Wilson is competing with John Turturro as an arrogant Italian race car in the first World Grand Prix to determine the world's fastest car. This takes us to the gorgeously rendered locations of Tokyo, Paris, and London which often distracts from the flimsy predictable plot. And, oh yeah, Eddie Izzard voices a army green SUV billionaire who's promoting a green gasoline substitute fueling the vehicles in the Grand Prix.



So Caine and Mortimer with the scrappy help of LCG work to take down the bad guys trying to discredit the threat to traditional gasoline. If you can't guess the identity of the mysterious villain way before it's revealed then you're probably not paying attention.



That, or Pixar has succeeded in dazzling you enough that you don't care.



LCG was fine in small doses in the first CARS, but its a major malfunction to make Mater the central dominant character. His one note bucktoothed presence grated on me in every scene, and the tired premise of  his dumb luck reeks of comic desperation, which is very surprising in a Pixar film.



No Pixar palette should ever attempt to balance the likes of Michael Caine and Larry the Cable Guy (felt I should type it out this time).



As I said, CARS 2 isn't awful, it's just awfully average for a Pixar film. There are some fun sequences, but after the heights of the last several years (RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, UP, TOY STORY 3) this sequel feels like treading water. 



And with its over abundance of country bumpkin crap via one of the un-funniest and irritating comedians of all time, it barely keeps afloat.



Oh yeah, there is a amusing TOY STORY short called "Hawaiian Vacation" before the movie so that, at least is one discernible plus.





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MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: The Film Babble Blog Review

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Dir. Woody Allen, 2011)

At first glance, Owen Wilson looks like an unlikely Woody Allen surrogate.

Yet in Allen's best film since VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, it's an inspired piece of casting that works. Wilson puts real effort into the character of Gil Pender, a Hollywood hack screenwriter who wants to give real writing a try, and finish that difficult novel he's been tinkering with for months.

On vacation in France, Wilson's fiancée (Rachel McAdams) accuses him of romanticizing the past - particularly Paris in the '20s, an era he would most like to live in. Wilson clashes with McAdam's conservative parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy), and her friends including a wonderfully snobby Michael Sheen, so he takes off on a walk around the city taking in the sights.

At the chimes of midnight, an old timey car pulls up, and the drunk passengers plead with Wilson to get in. After some hesitation, he joins them.

Somehow this takes him back to, you guessed it (or saw the trailer), Paris in the '20s. It's a rollicking party of an era where everybody he meets is famous figure of the arts. At a party, with piano accompaniment by Cole Porter (Yves Heck) no less, he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill).

There's also Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Marcial di Fonzo Bo as Pablo Picasso, and the best one of all: Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali.

Wilson meets a fetching model (Marion Cotillard) who he falls for on the spot. So every night back in the present, he makes the excuse to McAdams that he wants to go out on a walk, and goes back to hobnob with history. The predicament of choosing the past over the present becomes a sticky one, as there's the possibility of another love in the form of Lea Seydoux as an antiques dealer "in the now."

There's a wonderful wit and whimsy to how Allen plays this all out. It's his warmest film since, uh, I can't remember when.

In other words, it's the most satisfying Woody Allen film in ages.

Wilson's delivery of Allen's choice one-liners is infectious, and he quotes from the greats, such as Faulkner's "The past is never dead, It's not even past." convincingly enough to make one forget the man-child of "Hall Pass" from earlier this year.

The film is at its most radiant when it's in those sequences set in the past. In a neat little twist, Cotillard dreams of living in the 1890's; turns out everybody has their dream era.

One personal thought is that I wish the Woodman would've filmed this in black and white. It's not just because the opening montage of shots of Paris was strongly reminiscent of the opening of MANHATTAN, I feel like B & W would've brought out something more in the photography, the depictions of both present and 20's Paris, and the performances of the people playing historical personalities.

As I said that's just a personal quibble. I'm just an aficionado of the man's B & W work so don't mind me.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS isn't gonna to make me rearrange my top 10 Woody Allen movies, but it's a lovely lark that I predict even non-fans would enjoy. I think most people can relate wishing for a simpler more inspiring time to live in, and I think they'll be greatly amused with this simple and inspiring story.




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HALL PASS: The Film Babble Blog Review

HALL PASS (Dirs. Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2011)



At a preview screening of this film the audience in the packed theater cheered during the trailers when the cast of the upcoming THE HANGOVER PART II hit the screen.





I knew right then that this crowd was going to absolutely love what was ahead. And they did from start to finish of HALL PASS – they laughed loudly at every sex joke, masturbation joke, drug/alcohol joke, every single scatological shenanigan, every utterance of profanity, everything. 





So much so that I missed a lot of dialogue, but, hey, I’m not complaining about that.





I more than got the gist that the premise - Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live) are long married yet still juvenile horndogs who are given a week off from their marriages by their wives Jenna Fischer (The Office) and Christina Applegate – was just another excuse for the Farrelly brothers to again bombard the populace with their brand of extremely cheap humor.





From OLD SCHOOL to the oeuvre of Judd Apatow, the boy-men-who-can’t-grow-up-genre has been so much better served. There are a few laughs here and there – the familiar Law And Order sound effect greets the day 1-7 segment titles, and there are a fair amount of decent (though not laugh out loud funny) one-liners, but they are a rarity among the hundreds of groaners throughout.





There’s an odd mixture of a supporting cast: Stephen Merchant (who’s usually not far away from Ricky Gervais), J.B. Smoove, Joy Behar (!), Alyssa Milano, and most ridiculously Richard Jenkins as a too tan gold necklace sporting swinger who guides the 2 men in their quest to get laid while their wives are out of town.





Predictably Fischer and Applegate are themselves tempted by convenient suitors so the film tries to grow a heart in its last third, but by then I was so worn out by the tiresome cramming of foul gags into every scene that I really didn’t care how it turned out – who scored, who realized the supposed strength of their love, who got punked –none of it mattered to me.





But then, I may be in the minority because from what I witnessed at that screening, there’s no denying that it’s a crude crowd-pleaser that will probably be a big hit. To me, however, it just confirmed that the Farrelly brothers are still on my short list of my least favorite film makers.





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