In Review: "The Intern"

I'm so glad this movie exists. It really takes the advice to respect your elders to heart -- something my generation has forgotten.

The Story

Ben (Robert DeNiro) is a retired widower who wants to put some purpose back in his life. He finds an internet start up that is looking for senior citizens to do an internship. Ben gets the job and is assigned to help out the CEO and founder of the company Jules (Anne Hathaway). Jules may look like she is a superwoman and can take care of her daughter, maintain her marriage, and still run a thriving company, but it turns out she is barely keeping her head above water. That's where Ben comes in. He reminds her of what's important in life, helping her find herself once again.

The Stars

I don't think we have ever seen Robert De Niro as this kind of character. Sure, he's been the overprotective dad in an unsuccessful "Fockers" series, but he's never quite been this adorable. In fact, using "adorable" to describe Robert De Niro is almost laughable. Heck, he was boxing in "Grudge Match" as the age of 70! But he has transformed to a lovable, adorable grandpa character that every person wishes was their grandpa.

I am continually amazed at Anne Hathaway's journey. She was Princess Mia in "The Princess Diaries" in 2001, the movie she says saved her acting career. And now she's an Oscar winner and has planned so many different characters it's hard to remember that that person was a Disney princess at one point in time.

The Message

In this fast-paced digital world, much of the time the older generation is left behind in the dust to understand a complex and confusing thing. I'm lucking I was born into the home computer and internet generation. I would have no clue how to figure it all out! Much of the time, this ignorance of the older generation is mocked (see "The Internship" (2013)), and in turn, there is a generalization that this generation has nothing to contribute to this new world and that the younger generation doesn't need to listen to their advice. This is very, very wrong. In fact, it is a weakness of our country and our culture.

Imagine a place, where people wrote letters just because, had human conversations when they had something important to say, men opened doors for women and let them wipe their snotty noses on their handkerchiefs. (How to get to a woman's hurt-- Give her a handkerchief) We have become a world of singular beings who live their lives around other people instead of in communion with each other. This is something the older generation thrived on and lived for.

The younger generation has forgotten that, and we need our older generation to help guide us back on track.

Overall

I love that this movie is a romantic comedy about two people who are not romantic with each other. I love that this movie talks about the real issues of our society (the rejection of working world women even in the 21st century). I love that this movie made me laugh and made me cry. It was more of an examination of these characters than a plot-driven story, which was slow in the beginning and dragged in the middle. But I think it's worth watching by all generations. Because we all have something to learn from each other.

3 out of 4 Handkerchiefs