The Intern (English, 2015)

Robert De Niro as Ben Whittaker is full of old-school astuteness and has aptly been portrayed as a practitioner of the lost art of 20th-century masculinity. He injects the character with enough magnetism in the way of distinct gestures and quirks to ensure that he’s more than a one-note Septuagenarian.

Anne Hathaway plays Jules Ostin, the founder and CEO of a successful Brooklyn-based e-commerce startup. She runs her company with a sturdy clutch and an obligatory grin in her trademark style. The Ben-Jules association is the adhesive holding The Intern together. De Niro and Hathaway bring a rock-hard amalgamation of screen chemistry and emotion to their roles, making the acquaintance that forms between them all the more resounding. They are both Oscar-winners, after all!!

Nancy Meyers’s screenplay does a commendable job and is relatively intervallic in its structure, shifting gears from being a modern-day workplace, to being a buddy comedy about Ben and Jules before becoming a relationship melodrama. Meyers evades generating any awkward tonal swings though, instead perfecting the film’s comedic and dramatic beats with an adroit hand.

Most of the supporting characters in The Intern are the type one expects to find in an average workplace comedy, but they are brought to life by an extremely affable and talented cast – Adam DeVine , Zack Pearlman, Jason Orley and Andrew Rannells. The set piece in which De Niro enlists some of his office goofballs on a break-in assignment, replete with Ocean’s Eleven references; even though silly is actually a tolerable bit of laugh-riot.

The Intern is visually neat and tidy but not an interesting one. One cannot stop but wonder if the movie in spite of its star cast is way too tepid to sparkle.

The end of the movie seems rushed and comes out of nowhere and could have been handled better.