Big fan of both Shaun of the Dead and The Wedding Crashers, so
this movie showdown is sure to be interesting indeed. In The World's End (2013), Simon Pegg and co. play characters who are
returning to the town that they grew up in order to finish a pub crawl that
they didn't complete back in their high-school days, only to find that it has
been taken over by robots. In The Internship
(2013), Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play two computer illiterate and
out-of-work salesmen who apply for Google's internship program. Both are
comedies, though one does have some horror elements to it. Which will be the
victor?
The World's End
(2013)
This viewer saw Shaun
of the Dead at the movies way back in 2004 as a teenager (God, I'm that
old, am I?), and was really quite impressed. The same viewer, a few years
later, saw Hot Fuzz at the movies and
enjoyed it, but didn't think it was anywhere near the same caliber as its
zombie-comedy predecessor. I'm afraid to say that I didn't like The World's End at all. It was kind of a
massive mess of a movie, and the fact that it has received all this critical
praise is actually kind of baffling.
It starts out promisingly enough, and there is some
potentially interesting character development in the beginning-- primarily concerning Pegg's washed-up, alcoholic protagonist, but it all just fizzles out in the
long run, and this is mainly due to the complete lack of regard for logic in
the screenplay.
An example, you ask? Well when the heroes discover that the
town has been taken over by hostile robots, their answer to the problem is to
keep drinking, to keep on pursuing the golden mile. Come on, that's the
stupidest, most illogical thing ever! Also, for some reason, five extremely
British, extremely middle-class desk jockeys are also competent martial
artists? Give me a break.
There are a few effective concepts at play here: the way light beams out of the
robots' head is pretty creepy, and some of the dialogue works (though not
enough by a long-shot). However, the robots and their motives and modus operandi are not properly explained, and the
apocalyptic ending is shabbily tacked on and supremely glib.
The Internship (2013)
I'd heard that this film sucked, so I didn't go see it at the movies. I'm a huge fan of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, and I think The Wedding Crashers just might be one
of the funniest movies I've seen ("You've heard the saying that we only
use ten percent of our brains? Well I like to think we only use ten percent of
our hearts.") I did manage to catch The Internship on bluray, however, and I have to
say I was pleasantly surprised.
Sure it's not the most innovative or even original
screenplay, and you can probably detect elements of its three-act structure
from space, but The Internship is a
genuinely heart-felt consideration of some universal themes. Themes like social
isolationism and finding and utilising our inner strengths -- it's all there
and it's dealt with in a way that is refreshingly optimistic and funny. Many critics are labelling it as a prolonged advertisement for Google-- and it most certainly is-- but it's also incredibly funny.
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn shine in this, and part of the
appeal is watching the two social butterflies navigate a technological world
populated by socially awkward computer geeks. You throw in a dash of computer
illiteracy on behalf of Wilson and Vaughn, and you've got a recipe for some
great scenes. One, involving Vaughn explaining his idea for an app (that is
basically Instagram) is particularly
hilarious.
Owen Wilson also gets his fair share of the laughs as well,
with his Southern American and utterly optimistic charm-in-the-face-of-adversity sure to melt even the most cynical of hearts (he says to the film's antagonist, a ruthless twenty-something he is
competing against: "There's always gonna be a joker who wants to play
fuck-around. I guess that's going to be you, man. Okay. At least we
know.") I found it all pretty hard to resist.
You should go and see:
The Internship
It was a surprisingly good movie, and when the competition
is disturbingly unthoughtful swill like The
World's End, it's really no choice at all.
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