In the new comedy The Intern, Robert De Niro plays an man who becomes an intern at a hip internet company despite the fact that he's much older than your average, college-aged intern. In the 2013 comedy The Internship, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play two men who become interns at a hip internet company despite the fact that they're much older than your average, college-aged intern. The two films admittedly bear more than a passing resemblance to one another, so just what are the differences between The Intern and The Internship?
Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few differences between the films. First of all, the two movies aren't even really the same genre. Sure, they're both comedies, but there are a lot of different types of comedies out there. I would describe The Intern as more of an "adult" comedy, while The Internship is more of a goofy "screwball" comedy. To give you an idea of what I mean, just take a look at the previous films from each director. The Intern's Nancy Meyers directed such films as Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, and It's Complicated. All three of those films are comedies, but all are light on zany antics and heavy on real human emotion. Whereas the director of The Internship, Shawn Levy, has helmed such films as The Pink Panther, Cheaper by the Dozen, and the Night at the Museum movies. All of these films are much wackier in tone with themes that aren't nearly as grown up as the films in Meyers' catalog. The Intern and The Internship are no exception, as both of them fall mostly in line with their respective directors' prior work.
Another obvious difference is the age of the interns in each film. Vaughn and Wilson are both in their 40s for The Internship, putting them around twice the age of the typical college-aged intern. De Niro, however, is 70 in The Intern, making him considerably older than any intern you're likely to find. The movies also have different reasons for their protagonists pursuing new jobs. Vaughn and Wilson are laid off when their employer goes out of business, so they're desperate for work. De Niro is a retired widower looking for something new in life. See? Different.
The internships themselves are also vastly different in both films. In The Internship , which takes place at Google, all of the interns compete as teams for a chance to be employed with the search giant. In The Intern, De Niro signs on as the intern for Anne Hathaway's character, who's the head of a fictional online fashion magazine. Because of this, the relationships in the films are very different. In The Internship, Vaughn and Wilson are friends with one another while also close with some of the younger interns. The Intern is mostly about the relationship between De Niro and Hathaway and what they mutually learn from one another; he as an older person with life experience, and she as a younger person just getting started.
So despite their surface similarities, The Intern and The Internship are two very different movies. The one you'll prefer will largely depend on your taste in movies, and whether you'd rather see Robert DeNiro get an awkward chair massage, or Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson try to figure out how to use Facetime. Either way, you can't really go wrong.
Images: Warner Bros. Pictures; Giphy (2)
