Mark Kermode, Observer film critic 

The Intern review – humdrum dramedy

Nancy Meyers’s late-life work experience story, starring Robert De Niro, hits the appropriate equal opps notes
  
  

Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro in The Intern
Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro in The Intern. Photograph: Francois Duhamel Photograph: Francois Duhamel/PR

Stories of Robert De Niro baling out of an innocuous Radio Times interview (he complained about the “negative inference” of Emma Brockes’s questions) suggested that the one-time screen great’s latest vehicle is an embarrassment-causing stinker. Actually, Nancy Meyers’s humdrum dramedy is nothing to get upset about. De Niro plays Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old widower who lands a late-life internship at an e-commerce company run by Anne Hathaway’s harassed but successful Jules Ostin. So basically it’s The Devil Wears Prada: Next Generation – The Nicer Years. Ben is full of old-school wisdom (“always carry a handkerchief”) and soon becomes Jules’s confidant as a work/life crisis beckons and marital discord looms. Meyers’s screenplay makes all the right equal-ops noises as Jules faces sexist stereotyping from friends and colleagues alike, while Ben proves himself an unexpected feminist flag-waver. A shame, then, that Rene Russo should be reduced to providing Carry On-style light relief as the office masseuse in a role that was presumably savagely reduced in the editing.

The film team review The Intern.
 

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