‘The Internship’ Whores Out Google In Comic Throwback To 2005
As if Google hasn’t already invaded nearly every aspect of our everyday lives, the tech giant has mastered the art of product placement in the new film, “The Internship.” Set to release June 7, the movie pairs “Wedding Crashers’” stars Vince Vaughn and Own Wilson for the first time in eight years. And if you’ve been unhappy with recent comedies, “The Internship” may be just what you’ve been looking for.
According to a recent review from “The Onion,” the film is poised to be the best movie of 2005. No, that wasn’t a typo. “The Onion” points to the film’s fading starts, long past the peaks in their careers, as well as its reference to nearly-decade old pop culture references.
It’s jokes may be out of date, but who doesn’t still love “Wedding Crashers?” The teaming of Vaughn and Wilson still has the potential to usher in a barrel full of laughs. More disturbing is the whoring out of Google, depicted in the film as a wondrous fantasy land full of free food, fascinating people and mesmerizing gadgets. In fact, “The Internship” is more or less a two-hour long commercial for Google’s famous culture and products.
The movie depicts Vaughn and Wilson as two middle-aged men who, unable to find adequate work in a struggling economy, set out for new careers in the tech industry by taking on Google internships. In fact, Google does select about 1,500 interns from around the world to participate in its elite program each summer. But the reality of the film ends there.
“The Internship” fictionalizes an off-the-wall curriculum for Google’s program, in which interns are separated into teams to compete for the grand prize of full-time jobs at Google. In another throwback to 2005, the teams even compete in a game of Quidditch, the mythical sport depicted in “Harry Potter.”
“This is not a documentary on Google where you come in and say, ‘This is exactly the way things are done there,‘” Vaughn told an audience of real-life Google interns and technology reporters after a screening of “The Internship” in San Francisco.
While the plot may be fictional, the products depicted in it are definitely not. The film not only promotes Google’s brand, but YouTube, Gmail, Maps and the Chrome Web browser are also written into many of the film’s shenanigans. Co-founder Sergey Brin even makes two cameo appearances, playing himself.
Google prostitutions doesn’t come cheap though. The company purportedly contributed $60 million to the film’s budget in exchange for the “free” advertising.
“The reason we got involved in that is because computer science has a marketing problem,” Page said last month during an appearance at a Google conference for programmers in San Francisco. “We are the nerdy curmudgeons.“