This is the kind of movie i thought 21 Jump Street was going to be but that film showed me EXACTLY where modern comedies are going wrong by being oddly in touch with the times, subverting stereotypical tropes of highschool and simply being very very funny (i love the opening scene to that movie, it nails 2000).
This movie could have worked if they did that; subverted the regular expectations and having then butt up against their own preconceptions of a technology company, 'nerds' and the antiquated ideas of that culture compared to it's reality. The only way i can find a film like this working if the humor comes from "Look at these idiots, thy don't understand the world has moved on and they no longer grasp how the world works"
In a good movie they would go there expecting lots of bespectacled dorks and actually find a lot of very rich, highly qualified graduates with a very laid back but effective working environment (because that's, you know, what it's actually like) and they would be hopeless Neanderthals who have to be beaten into the modern age by various comical means.
I would actually like that, it would be a comedy about the generational gap that isn't grossly anachronistic. Make it even more jarring by having various traditional religious groups (i know it's a bit heavy but it works) and have them try to get a job in Google or any tech company
I'd have quite liked to hear Bob rant about this one in a video but it's great to have this content nonetheless.
I don't even know what to say about this movie; it sounds truly awful and cringe inducing. When will Hollywood learn that stereotypes aren't funny? Come to think of it, when will Hollywood learn that the vast majority of real people aren't stereotypes.
NinjaDeathSlap said:
"That was so bad, I think I'll switch to Bing."
Now Bob, let's not be rushing into things that we're going to regret down the line.
Hoo boy, Bob's in full-on film snob mode here. I read Vince Vaughn co-wrote it, so I didn't expect him to really stretch the material in Internship. But then again, Bob hasn't been a reliable voice of opinion when it comes to comedies.
This reminds me of the excellent video review of this movie on the Onion. "The Internship Poised to be the Biggest Comedy of 2005". Even (or maybe especially?) in the wake of shows like The Big Bang Theory this movie STILL manages to feel like a dinosaur.
Odd, considering Charles Xavier first appeared in September 1963 - fifty years ago. I can see they might not /care/ about X-Men, cause the love of comic books and comic book movies is kind of a niche thing. (Far less so than it used to be, granted) but to think they've never heard of him? I've never been a comic book geek or even seen most comic book based movies and I'd know that. Plus there were enough ads shoved down everyone's throats for the movies.
But it's nice to know that laughing at clueless 'old' people and geeks is still holywood gold. Apparently these people learned nothing from Revenge of the Nerds.
That is so weird. I'd need to know more detail to find this true. Where you work, where you live, etc. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're flat out lying. But my generation is the console, computer generation. We were there when things just started to "boot up" for lack of a better term. I remember all of my computers, I've owned almost every gen of consoles. That's all my friends and I, even today, discuss.
I once got fired from a job because my boss "never reads SMS messages on his phone". That was last year.
Never underestimate the amount of completely tech-illiterate 40-somethings, just because you don't see them on the internet.
Proverbial Jon said:
When will Hollywood learn that stereotypes aren't funny? Come to think of it, when will Hollywood learn that the vast majority of real people aren't stereotypes.
About the same time as they discover you can cash in easily on multi-faceted, well-written and believable characters facing problems both realistic and imaginative.
It's funny because this perfectly mirrors my initial thoughts on just seeing the posters from the film. I knew very little about it but this article and the onion's video "The internship is the best movie of 2005" pretty much confirmed every conclusion I had jumped to.
The thing is I bet the majority of people on gaming forums also see lots of movies and probably watched cartoons as kids some of my friends never watched cartoons they were always at football practice when they aired on saturday mornings.
Yeah, this right here pretty much nails it. So-called "nerd culture" is interwoven at many points - how many movies have had tie-in video games, how many comic books have been made into movies, how many sci-fi/fantasy properties have been adapted to TV? Those of us immersed in the culture in one aspect or another (and since we're all here posting on a video gaming forum I'd say that's all of us) will not only end up experiencing adaptations of other supposedly geeky media but will also absorb knowledge and trivia from friends who are interested in other aspects of geekdom. Even those who wouldn't call themselves geeks will have learned something, be it from a casual interest in CoD or enjoying Game of Thrones, or even just being peripherally aware of other things via memes.
It can be easy to forget that older people aren't as mired in the internet culture, and that they don't have the knowledge base to draw on. I wouldn't be entirely surprised to know that a 40 year old man doesn't know who Professor X is, because unless he read the comics growing up then he won't have experienced the franchise through the TV shows, video games or movies because they just aren't aimed at him.
I haven't seen the movie... but it looked to me like there was a role reversal of geek and non-geek culture. That concept was irritating in itself because the idea of "Revenge of the Nerds" where the jocks are laughed at and the Nerds get all the ladies and money and what not was really annoying. So, it's geeks within geeks? That actually makes the prospects of this movie even worse than what I thought previously.
This is the kind of movie i thought 21 Jump Street was going to be but that film showed me EXACTLY where modern comedies are going wrong by being oddly in touch with the times, subverting stereotypical tropes of highschool and simply being very very funny (i love the opening scene to that movie, it nails 2000).
This movie could have worked if they did that; subverted the regular expectations and having then butt up against their own preconceptions of a technology company, 'nerds' and the antiquated ideas of that culture compared to it's reality. The only way i can find a film like this working if the humor comes from "Look at these idiots, thy don't understand the world has moved on and they no longer grasp how the world works"
In a good movie they would go there expecting lots of bespectacled dorks and actually find a lot of very rich, highly qualified graduates with a very laid back but effective working environment (because that's, you know, what it's actually like) and they would be hopeless Neanderthals who have to be beaten into the modern age by various comical means
I would actually like that, it would be a comedy about the generational gap that isn't grossly anachronistic. Make it even more jarring by having various traditional religious groups (i know it's a bit heavy but it works) and have them try to get a job in Google or any tech company
There needs to be less "Lol dorks with glasses" jokes and more "Millionaires with a Pruis" jokes. We live in a world with mega-rich tech pioneers in their teens. I mean can you imagine a scene where these two aging has-been actors playing aging has-beens are given a patronizing dressing down by a 17 year old millionaire? It would be genius. Kind of like a middle aged Bill and Ted wonder onto the set of the social network.
Ok here is a better pitch for the movie;
-People are overly nice if slightly smug and slightly self satisfied in that environmentally conscious, obama activist way.
-They get mistaken for slightly folksy tech pioneers "Wow if these guys can act this stupid they must really be brilliant!" and their ignorance is treated and cute and quaint.
-They misunderstand the culture and shenanigans ensue
-They get given a project to do and goof off at all the on the job perks google gives them and mistake their relaxed Californian attitude that is geared towards top Harvard/MIT graduates for somewhere they can just sit around all day
-Maybe a couple of slacker weed jokes
-They have to give a presentation about "Social media in a met hyper-connected world" and get found out and royally mocked and chewed out by people they consider 'dorks'
-Their mentor figure gives them one last chance but everyone has gone full ivy league superior on them so we can route a little for our protagonists.
-They genuinely try for once and give one last ditch pitch and being from a different background come up with something useful.
-People realize their not so different after all, the magic of friendship is found, care-bears etc etc
It's a rough idea of a plot that might actually ring some humor or at least warmth out of the story.
Okay, its not funny, that's all you needed to say.
Personally, everything else about the plot, characters, and possible humor sounded good to me. Don't go off on "what, you do think...what, you don't think...what, you don't think...?" because I kind did.
-_-
Yes, I'd like to see 80s and 90s pop references being dropped, and no I don't care if the whole "the economy sucks now" isn't brought up in a comedy movie.
-_-
But if it's not funny, it's not funny. And that is all that matters with comedy...nothing else.
This sounds a lot like the premise of the movie "Grandma's Boy" which I mistakenly watched part of on tv while bored. The plot almost made me physically sick. This is another reason why I hate "generation X". Its like aren't any freaking young people in charge of anything. Anybody under 30 would have known this movie was riddled with bullshit, outdated stereotypes but the aging ass holes who made this movie couldn't be bothered to listen. Its enough that politics and the news are still run by these kind of gen x's but Hollywood too? Ridiculous
Wow you made that sound to bad its painful just to know it exists. Does not surprise me its horrible though i saw a few commercials for this and thought they were adverting some commercials pretending to be a web series I did not even realize it was a movie till I read this article, heck I don't even remember what they were trying to advertise. (it was not Google it was some product tie in commercials).
I haven't seen the movie, but I'm really not sure what Bob is most upset about. He spent a lot of time talking about stereotypes and I don't see why that's such a big deal. I think that people on the internet generally believe that everything is so much more culturally evolved today; but I don't feel that's the reality. How are people as a whole really any different than ten or twenty years ago? You might say that you've grown up, but the world hasn't and that's why I don't get it when someone rails against stereotypes when entertainment is what has always defined them to begin with.
Maybe it's just too hard to say it wasn't funny when you're a film critic, I dunno.
Thanks Bob now I have reasons beyond my initial sighting of the posters to not see this one, my reservation was based on the film advertisements seeming too much like an well an extended advert but bad comedy too though, that really does get up in my grill.
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