Movie Review: The Intern

Let's imagine, together, the attributes that would make someone a wildly successful high school chemistry teacher. It probably isn't getting kids to learn how to calculate moles by deploying Avogadro's constant, nor does it have anything to do with them figuring out how to plot electron orbits, nor does it likely involve their ability to successfully recreate reactions precisely (all any high school chemistry lab can hope for is not to have a student, like me, who creates huge fireballs--I was a poor practical chemist). None of those pieces of knowledge are particularly important because most people, the vast majority, don't live lives where these factors come up very often. I suppose you could make an argument that a good high school chemistry teacher gets a lot of students to pass the A.P. Exam, but that is cynical and if you think that way you're probably not the kind of person I hope I am talking to anyway. Rather, a good high school chemistry teacher is probably someone who imparts a sense of astonishment at the way that delicate and universal interplay between matter and energy, wonder at the way that transition can be as gradual as the creep of rust or as violent as a supernova, and amazement at the unseen currents of reality that flow like magic beneath the surface of the seen.

Which is just another way of saying that I liked the new Nancy Meyers film The Intern more than it probably deserved. There are a lot of things in this movie that are, ultimately, irrelevant to my overall feelings. Technically, the score is what you always get from a Meyers film, be it Father of the Bride or It's Complicated, the direction and cinematography is yeoman like without any flash or sizzle, the performances by everyone except the two leads are nothing to write home about, and the major plot development that drives the film through its third act is totally unnecessary and counterproductive. Politically, Meyers has always been a bit dicey. As Wesley Morris pointed out in his review for Grantland, Meyers tends to locate men at the center of her romantic worlds, and tends to heap the blame for problems onto women. This is as true in The Intern as it is everywhere else in her career. But it's not enough to sink this movie.

It's not enough to sink this movie because the chemistry between Robert De Niro (in his best performance since Silver Linings Playbook) and Anne Hathaway is an absolute marvel. De Niro, as Ben Whitaker, plays a character of fundamental decency and curiosity. After the death of his wife he finds his retirement vacant and uninspiring. The diversions that he tries give some hint at the fundamental competence of the man: he learns Mandarin, takes up Tai Chi, experiences the world, but ultimately just wants to feel useful. Seeing an ad to become a "Senior Intern" he applies and becomes the personal assistant to Anne Hathaway's Jules Ostin, a figure of brightness, power, and vulnerability that few actresses besides Hathaway could have played nearly as well. The relationship that slowly develops between them is profound, and watching it develop over the course of the two hour run time of the film was one of the most emotionally rewarding experiences that I have had at the movies this year. Whatever flaws the film may have, and they are numerous, it is the focus on this relationship, and the gradual revelation of these two characters, that makes the film worth watching.

Rating: 3/4