Guilty Pleasure #120: The Internship (dir by Shawn Levy)

Posted on July 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2o13’s The Internship, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play Nick and Billy, two longtime salesman who, having lost their jobs, apply for an internship at Google. Despite there not being any logical reason for either one of them to be given a spot, Nick and Billy are accepted. Suddenly, these two middle-aged guys who know next to nothing about programming or the Internet find themselves at the Google campus. Teaming up with a group of much younger outcasts (albeit very smart outcasts), Nick and Billy compete for a job at Google.

(Personally, the only job I would want at Google would be designing the Google Doodle.)

At first, no one is happy about having to work with Nick and Billy. Nick and Billy are adults, the type who still use landline phones and wonder why the kids are so obsessed with looking at a little screen. They’re loud. They make crude jokes and they don’t understand stuff like safe spaces. They fall for obvious pranks, like being sent to a college campus to track down “Professor Charles Xavier.” This leads to them both getting knocked out by a bald man in a wheelchair. “Professor Xavier’s a total dick!” Billy gasps.

Eventually, though, Nick and Billy start to win everyone over. Their old school competitiveness comes in handy during a game of Quidditch. They know how to talk to women at bars. They know how to appeal to someone running an old-fashioned business. But will that be enough to win them a job at Google?

Back when the Onion was funny, one of their best headlines was ‘The Internship’ Poised To Be Biggest Comedy Of 2005! The joke, of course, was that the film was coming out in 2013. The headline worked because it was true. The film felt very much out-of-place in the world of 2013. The majority of the film’s humor came from Nick and Billy not really knowing what Google was but, by 2013, even the most cranky of boomer grandparents were using Google to search for their Facebook password. Nick and Billy were not boomers. They may have been older than the other interns but still, it’s hard to believe that two guys in their mid-40s would be that clueless about everything from the Internet to the identity of Charles Xavier. I mean, the X-Men movies were kind of a big deal.

The other thig that dated the film was its portrayal of Google as essentially just being a fun playground full of nerdy prodigies who just needed someone to teach them how to party. By 2013, everyone knew that Google was a powerful and somewhat intimidating company. Indeed, at its weakest, the film basically feels like a 2-hour commercial for Google. Never mind that, by 2013, Google was so big and omnipresent that it really didn’t need to advertise.

So, with all that in mind, why do I find myself watching this movie whenever I happen to come across it? First off, as uneven as the movie is, it is funny. The Quidditch scene did make me laugh. John Goodman’s and Will Ferrell’s unhinged cameos made me laugh, almost despite myself. The scene where Nick and Billy annoy the group by misinterpreting what is meant by “coding” made me laugh, if just because of how bizarrely enthusiastic Nick and Billy were when they convinced themselves that their internship director was a Jeff Goldblum fan. (It makes no sense but just go with it.) Most importantly, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn made me laugh. There was absolutely no way to make it plausible that Nick and Billy would be that clueless about technology but Wilson and Vaughn really threw themselves into their roles and, as a result, I’m always willing to forgive some of the film’s missteps. The mix of Vaughn’s overage frat boy goofiness and Wilson’s mellow spaciness always makes me laugh more than it probably should. They’re a good comedic team and they’re both just so damn earnest in this movie that it works a lot better than it really should. In the end, you do find yourself rooting for them. They’re two hard-workers who like to play hard and who have the courage to reinvent themselves. What’s more American than that?

(Even more importantly, when you come across the film on cable, you’re free to pretend that it actually came out in 2005, back when the plot would have actually made more sense.)

If any film lives up to the term guilty pleasure, it’s The Internship.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

The Films of 2020: Artemis Fowl (dir by Kenneth Branagh)

Posted on January 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What exactly is Artemis Fowl about?

Basically, it opens with news reports about the home of millionaire businessman Artemis Fowl (Colin Farrell) being raided by the police and the discovery that Fowl has apparently been stealing ancient artifacts from across the world. A bearded man named Mulch Diggums (Josh Gad) is arrested at the house and is interrogated by …. someone. I guess he’s being interrogated by an intelligence agency, I don’t know. Mulch explains that he’s a dwarf and that he’s about to tell a story that will prove that magic exists which …. okay, I guess.

The story is about Artemis Fowl’s 12 year-old son, who is also named Artemis Fowl (Ferdia Shaw). The younger Artemis Foul is a criminal mastermind, just like his father, and he wears a suit and dark glasses and basically, he looks like a 12 year-old who dressed up like one of the Men In Black for Halloween. Artemis Fowl the younger is investigating the disappearance of Artemis Fowl the older which leads to a search for a missing magical object. Somehow, it all involves faeries and other magical figures. Judi Dench pops up a few times, looking stern. There’s a lot of chase scenes and a few fight scenes, none of which really make much of an impression.

The plot of Artemis Fowl is pretty much impossible to follow, especially if you haven’t read (or, in my case, recently reread) the books on which the film is based. A huge part of the problem is that the film itself doesn’t really develop any sort of individual personality. For a film about a 12 year-old wearing a suit and concocting criminal schemes, Artemis Fowl is surprisingly bland. It feels like a collection of scenes from other YA adaptations. We get the slow motion fight scenes. We get the magical scenes that feel as if they were lifted from a lesser entry from the Harry Potter series. Indeed, a huge chunk of the film seems to be made up of discarded scenes from director Kenneth Branagh’s previous excursion into the world of fantasy and vaguely defined magic, Thor. The film moves quickly but since nothing interesting or unusual is happening, you find yourself wishing that maybe the film would slow down for a just a minute or two and spend a bit of time exploring the world in which the two Artemis Fowls live. It’s a remarkably undetailed fantasy world that Artemis Fowl presents us with. I spent the majority of the movie wondering whether Judi Dench was supposed to be an elf or a faerie. One of the great actress, Dench spends the entire film wearing pointed ears and looking rather annoyed.

Much like Dolittle, Artemis Fowl ends with the promise of more cinematic adventures, though it’s doubtful that promise will actually be fulfilled. Also — and again like Dolittle — it’s hard not to feel that Artemis Fowl would have worked much better as an animated film than as a live action spectacular. Unfortunately, Artemis Fowl is just too bland and borderline incoherent to really make much of a lasting impression.

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2017: Marshall (dir by Reginald Hudlin)

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, here I am. January is nearly over. The Oscar nominations have already been announced. 2018 is well under way and yet, I still have 158 films on the DVR that I need to watch and a few 2017 releases that I still need to catch up on. At this point, I’ve accepted that I’ll probably never truly be “caught up” when it comes to watching movies. But, that’s okay. I love movies too much to ever regret having an excuse to watch more.

On Wednesday night, I watched Marshall, which came out last October. A film about the early life of civil rights activist and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, Marshall seemed like a movie that would perfectly capitalize on the current political atmosphere. The film starred Josh Gad and Chadwick Boseman and a lot of people — including me — assumed that the excitement over Boseman as Black Panther would also translate into excitement over a chance to see him in this film. (For that matter, Josh Gad has also recently been proving himself to be a far better actor than I originally believed him to be. Never again will I refer to Gad as being the poor man’s Jonah Hill.) The film’s reviews were respectable. Quite a few sites, including this one, listed Marshall as being a potential Oscar nominee.

And yet, when the movie was released, it fell flat at the box office. On the week of its release, it finished in 11th place. I guess there’s a lot of reasons for that. Personally, I think it would have done better if the film had been released in November or December. In a month that is traditionally dominated by horror movies and the last gasps of a few summer blockbusters, Marshall seemed somewhat out-of-place. Perhaps Marshall would have stood a better chance if it had been given a limited release in December, with a big awards push for Chadwick Boseman. Who knows? As it is, it ended up losing money and it only received one Oscar nomination, for best original song.

Having now watched Marshall, I can say it’s a good movie, though perhaps never quite as good as you want it to be. It takes place in 1940. After making a name for himself defending blacks in the South, attorney Thurgood Marshall travels to Connecticut to defend a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) who has been accused of raping a white woman (Kate Hudson). It soon becomes obvious that Northern justice is just as corrupted by bigotry as Southern justice. A racist judge (James Cromwell) rules that Marshall will not be allowed to even speak in court. Marshall ends up advising the chauffeur’s attorney, an insurance lawyer named Sam Friedman (Josh Gad). All of Sam’s friends expect him to just make a deal with the smug prosecutor (Dan Stevens) and move on. However, Sam believe his client to be not guilty and, with Marshall’s help, is determined to win an acquittal.

Director Reginald Hudlin never seems to be quite what type of movie he’s trying to make. Sometimes, the film feels like a reverent biopic. Other time, it’s an old-fashioned courtroom drama, complete with different flashbacks depending on who is doing the testifying. And then other times, Marshall is an extremely stylish film that almost turns Thurgood Marshall into a comic book super hero. Fortunately, Chadwick Boseman is such a talented and charismatic actor that he holds all of the disparate elements of the film together. Not only does Boseman bring intelligence and righteous anger to the role, he also brings a sense of fun. As played by Boseman, Marshall isn’t just outsmarting a prejudiced system and putting racists in their place. He’s also having a good time while he’s doing it. Boseman is a lot of fun to watch and he gets good support from Josh Gad and Sterling K. Brown.

Marshall may not be a perfect film but Chadwick Boseman is always watchable. The excitement over Black Panther has proven that Boseman is a star but Marshall shows that he’s a pretty good actor as well.

Beauty and the Beast Cordially Invites You

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Arleigh

Anyone who grew up during the late 80’s and through the early 90’s saw the return to it’s Golden Age of Disney animation. The Little Mermaid was the first to start it, but it was the follow-up animated film Beauty and the Beast which announced loudly that Disney was back after years upon years of lackluster and underwhelming animated films.

Disney is now in the midst of another era of dominating the film industry with both it’s live-action and animated films. Recent years saw Disney take some of its classic animated films of the past and adapt them into live-action films. We’ve gotten live-action version of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (redone as Maleficent)

Next in line is the upcoming live-action adaptation of Disney’s own animated film (which itself was an adaptation of earlier films of the same title and premise) of Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, Dan Stevens and Luke Evans taking on the three iconic roles of Belle, the Beast and Gaston.

Beauty and the Beast is set to invite all as its guests on March 17, 2017.

Beauty and the Beast Teases an Invitation

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Arleigh

Walt Disney Studios continues to adapt their classic animated films into live-action and the next in line is 1991’s classic film, Beauty and the Beast.

This animated film was an instant classic and the first to be nominated outside of the Best Animated Film category in the Academy Awards. It was nominated for Best Picture and, for some, it truly deserve not just the nomination but should’ve won the Best Picture award that year.

The teaser trailer makes great use of the music written and composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for the film. We get both the prologue and the title track from the 1991 soundtrack in the teaser trailer. For those who saw the original animated film during it’s original first run in 1991 should be taken back to those days when Beauty and the Beast enchanted a global audience.

With a stellar cast led by Emma Watson, Dan Stevens and Luke Evans, this live-action adaptation has a lot to live up to.

Beauty and the Beast is set to invite all as its guests on March 17, 2017.

Here Are the Reliably Boring Razzie Nominations!

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yawn! The Razzies are always so boring! Here are this year’s predictable nominations. Talk about them on twitter and impress your friends.

Worst Picture
Fantastic Four
Fifty Shades of Grey
Jupiter Ascending
Paul Blart Mall Cop 2
Pixels

Worst Director
Andy Fickman, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2
Tom Six, Human Centipede 3
Sam Taylor-Johnson, Fifty Shades of Grey
Josh Trank, Fantastic Four
Andy and Lana Wachowski, Jupiter Ascending

Worst Actor
Johnny Depp, Mortdecai
Jamie Dornan, Fifty Shades of Grey
Kevin James, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2
Adam Sandler, The Cobbler and Pixels
Channing Tatum, Jupiter Ascending

Worst Actress
Katherine Heigl, Home Sweet Hell
Dakota Johnson, Fifty Shades of Grey
Mila Kunis, Jupiter Ascending
Jennifer Lopez, The Boy Next Door
Gwyneth Paltrow, Mortdecai

Worst Supporting Actor
Chevy Chase, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and Vacation
Josh Gad, Pixels and The Wedding Ringer
Kevin James, Pixels
Jason Lee, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip
Eddie Redmayne, Jupiter Ascending

Worst Supporting Actress
Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip and The Wedding Ringer
Rooney Mara, Pan
Michelle Monaghan, Pixels
Julianne Moore, Seventh Son
Amanda Seyfried, Love the Coopers and Pan

Worst Screenplay
Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank, Fantastic Four
Kelly Marcel, Fifty Shades of Grey
Andy and Lana Wachowski, Jupiter Ascending
Kevin James and Nick Bakay, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2
Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, Pixels

Worst Remake or Sequel
Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Road Chip
Fantastic Four
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
Human Centipede 3
Paul Blart Mall Cop 2

Worst Screen Combo
Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell, Fantastic Four
Johnny Depp and his glued-on mustache, Mortdecai
Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, Fifty Shades of Grey
Kevin James and either his Segway or glued-on mustache, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2
Adam Sandler and any pair of shoes, The Cobbler

Razzies Redeemer Award
Elizabeth Banks
M. Night Shyamalan
Will Smith
Sylvester Stallone

Playing Catch-Up With The Lesser Films of 2015: Get Hard, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Pixels, The Wedding Ringer

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Image Credit: http://www.sliceofscifi.tv/tag/trivia/ Please be sure to check them out!

SPOILER ALERT!

One or more of the films reviewed below will appear on my list of the 16 Worst Films of 2015! Can you guess which one(s)?

Get Hard (dir by Etan Cohen)

Will Ferrell is funny and Kevin Hart is funny and you would think that putting them together in one movie would be especially funny but … nope. Get Hard, which I watched on HBO a few weeks ago, is incredibly not funny. Ferrell plays a hedge fund manager who is convicted of fraud and embezzlement and it’s a sign of how haphazard this film is that I was never really sure whether he was supposed to be guilty or not. Anyway, Ferrell is terrified of going to prison but fortunately, he runs into Kevin Hart. Hart is playing the owner of a car wash here, a mild-mannered family man who simply wants to be able to afford to send his daughter to a good school. However, Ferrell assumes that, since Hart is black, Hart must be an ex-con.

So, Ferrell hires Hart to teach him how to survive in prison and Hart agrees. And, to be honest, this is not a terrible idea for an edgy satire but the film pulls it punches and never really exposes or challenges the racism that led to Ferrell hiring Hart in the first place. Instead, it’s more interested in making homophobic jokes about prison rape (there’s a particularly long and unpleasant scene where Ferrell attempts to learn how to give a blow job that feels like it was lifted from a deservedly forgotten 90s film) and eventually, it devolves into a painfully predictable action film.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (dir by Andy Fickman)

I know what someone out there is saying.

“YOU’VE NEVER EVEN SEEN THE FIRST PAUL BLART: MALL COP!!! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO REVIEW THE SEQUEL!?”

Well, listen — it’s true. I’ve never seen the first film and the only reason I watched the second one (on HBO at a friend’s house, which means that it literally cost me nothing) was because I had heard how terrible it was and I figured that I should see it before making out my list of the worst films of the year. But, even with that in mind, I think I can still give this film a fair review.

(At the very least, I’ll try. Dammit, I’ll try.)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is one of those films that is so forgettable that you forget about it while you’re watching. Kevin James plays Paul Blart, a mall security guard who goes to Las Vegas for a security guard convention and ends up getting involved in thwarting a big heist. It’s a comedy, though I can’t think of a single time I laughed. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 was not quite the abomination that I had been led to expect. It was, in no way, comparable to Birdemic, April Rain, or Man of Steel. Instead, it was just an incredibly empty and soulless film. It was a zombie movie that existed only to eat money.

One thing that is frustrating about a film like Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is that Kevin James seems like he could actually survive appearing in a good film, if he could just get a chance to make one. He’s likable and he’s got an everyman quality about him. But, for now, he seems to be trapped in films where he either plays Paul Blart or he’s surrounded by talking animals.

Pixels (dir by Chris Columbus)

Speaking of Kevin James, he’s also in Pixels! He plays William Cooper. When he was a kid, he was obsessed with playing video games. Now that he’s an adult, he’s the President of the United States! And he still keeps in contact with his best friend from childhood, Sam. Sam, needless to say, will never be President. When Sam was a kid, he was traumatized when he lost a national video game championship. Now that he’s an adult, he installs home-theater systems and he’s played by Adam Sandler…

When Earth is invaded, it turns out that the aliens are under the impression that video games are real! So, they recreate a bunch of classic video game characters and send them off to do havoc. Who better to stop them than the President and Sam? And who better to help than a nerdy conspiracy theorist (Josh Gad) and Eddie Planet (Peter Dinklage), the same guy who cheated in order to defeat Sam at the video game championship….

If you’re thinking that sounds like way too much plot for a silly comedy about video games coming to life, you’re right. Pixels has some cute moments (though, based on the comments and occasional laughter of the middle-aged people in the theater around me, I get the feeling that a lot of the film’s video game-themed humor was a bit too “before my time” for me to fully appreciate) but oh my God, it was such an unnecessarily busy movie. The idea behind Pixels had some potential but the film refused to take advantage of it.

I’ve said this before and I always get some strange looks but I honestly do think that — if he would actually break out of his comfort zone and stop doing movies that mostly seem to be about finding an excuse to hang out with his friends — Adam Sandler could be an acceptable dramatic actor. Check out his work in Punch-Drunk Love, Funny People, Reign Over Me, Spanglish, and even the first half of The Cobbler. (Tarantino even wrote the role of Donny Donowitz in Inglourious Basterds with Sandler in mind.) The fact that Sandler could be doing good work makes his continual bad work all the more frustrating and annoying.

The Wedding Ringer (dir by Jeremy Garelick)

And speaking of Josh Gad…he’s also in The Wedding Ringer! For that matter, so is Kevin Hart. Hart plays a guy who, for a sizable fee, will pretend to the lifelong best friend (and best man) for grooms who do not have enough real friends to fill out a wedding party. Hart refuses to get emotionally involved with his clients but that all changes when, despite himself, he becomes friends with Josh Gad, who is on the verge of getting married to Kaley Cuoco.

The Wedding Ringer got terrible reviews but it also was very popular with audiences and I imagine a lot of that had to do with the relationship between Hart and Gad. Both of them give very sincere performances that elevate some otherwise unpromising material. The Wedding Ringer wasn’t good (it’s predictable, it’s portrayal of Kaley Cuoco’s character verges on misogynistic) but, at the same time, it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be. In the end, it was pretty much a typical January film.