The Intern by Nancy Myers

Buenaventura, Allyza Marie D.

The Intern

Directed by Nancy Myers

        The film “The Intern” was written and directed by Nancy Myers. The award-winning actor, Robert De Niro plays a 70 year old retired Brooklyn widower named Ben Whittaker, who was hired as a Senior Intern in a fashion company called About The Fit, that was ran by Jules Ostin, a character played by the great Anne Hathaway. Basically, Jules Ostin is like every other hardworking CEO out there. She’s fierce, overworked and would do anything just to keep their company running. She has a husband named Matt portrayed by Anders Holm and a daughter named Paige played by Jojo Kushner. Ben Whittaker, on the other hand, disregarded the idea of being retired. He tried everything to occupy himself like travelling, golf, cooking lessons, and many more as he mentioned in his interview video. He feels that he’s “been trying to fill his days with a myriad of activities” and feels that it’s time for a change. And that change did happen when he got his internship at About the Fit. What I liked most about the film is how Ben did not sit around and mope when he lost his wife. He kept going. It was like it was meant to be bored just so he could help Jules with her problems. With his age, he was able to help out a lot of people and share them his experiences and advices.

        The film starts as Ben Whittaker shoots a video resume for a Senior Internship program that he wishes to apply for. He talks about how he’s been a widower for 3 and a half years and retirement is an “on-going relentless effort in creativity.” He already tried everything. He travelled the world, learned a new language, learned to cook, played golf, visits his son and his family in San Diego on his down time and many more. He then gets a call for a one on one interview. The next day, Ben gets ready for work. Jason gives them a tour around the ATF office, and tells them about how “About the Fit” was a fashion internet company ran by Jules Ostin, that once started this company in her small kitchen in Brooklyn with only 25 employees. And 4 months later she was online and now has about over 200 employees. During their meeting, Jules tells him that she really doesn’t have much for him to do and tells him what the purpose of hiring him, for her to set an example for the rest of the team. Then she sends him off and tells him that she will e-mail him if she has something for him to do. He keeps himself busy by hanging around and asking his co-workers about how to do such things in using technology. He helps his co-workers around and give them advice, for example, with Jason. He helps him with his problem with Becky. Cameron even calls him Mr. Congeniality for being a big help inside the office.

        With time on his hands, Ben went to work at 7 in the morning to clean up “the desk” where employees dump the things they don’t need which irritates Jules. With that, they rang the bell in the office, which is a practice when someone or something great has been performed. Then as a gift, Fiona, the office masseuse, gives him a massage that Ben seemed to very like. At home, the film introduces Jules’ other side of her life. We see her daughter, Paige and Matt, her husband, who prefers to be called a stay at home dad.  He gets a little gist of Jules’ life outside the office. On the way to drop off Paige, Ben says that Matt seems like a terrific guy. Jules says that Matt saved their butts because he left ATF to take care of Paige. Jules then emails Cameron to transfer Ben to another team for being too observant. When Jules drop Paige off her school, Ben notices how the other moms look down on her for always being busy. In the warehouse, Ben sees Jules instructing the workers on how they should be packaging the shipment nicely. Ben looked impressed. With years of experience, Jules gives Ben more tasks. He points out that Becky helped a lot with the work and encourages Jules to say something nice to Becky. Anyway, fast forward to another day, Jules accidentally sent an email to her mom saying that she is a terrorist for criticizing her website. Ben volunteers to go to her house together with Davis, Lewis and Jason. They deleted the email that Jules sent and celebrated with a drink afterwards. The next day, Ben takes Fiona on a funeral as their official first date.

        The morning after that, Matt feels sick, so Ben, being the gentleman that he is, takes Paige to the birthday party instead. In the party, he defends Jules in a professional way, so they would stop judging Jules for being a workaholic. Then they went home because page was feeling sick. Ben sees Matt getting inside a car, feeling a lot better. Ben waits a few hours until Matt returns.

        Ben starts to feel unwell but insisted that he still wants to accompany Jules to San Francisco. After a fire alarm goes off in their hotel, Ben assists Jules to her hotel room and was invited by Jules to have some tea. They talked about marriage and how Jules knows that Matt was cheating on her. Jules breaks down in front of Ben and starts to comfort her. The next day, she meets the CEO she liked so far. She offered him the job but she was told to sleep on it. When she got home, she talks to Matt about it and says that the CEO idea would be great for their family. She then visits Ben in the morning, wanting to hear what he has to say before she makes the right decision. He tells her that no one knows ATF more than her. She tells him that she came to Ben because she wanted to hear that and that he is her intern/best friend.