There is some Product Placement here, but damned if I know what it is.
The Internship is a 2013 comedy film starring Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Dylan O'Brien, and Rose Byrne and directed by Shawn Levy.
Billy McMahon (Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Wilson) are two employees of a firm that can't seem to embrace the technological changes the firm is going through and are aptly told by their boss that they're literally obsolete, and subsequently fired. However, Billy discovers that an internship at the headquarters of Google is available, and manages to land the duo a spot. Unfortunately they end up competing with hundreds of the world's best and brightest for the positions, and with their obvious lack of digital savvy... hilarity ensues.
The Internship provides examples of:
- 10-Minute Retirement: Billy decides to quit after screwing up the Help Desk challenge, only to be swayed over by Nick and rejoin the team for the final Sales quest.
- Abusive Parents: Yo-Yo's mom is, along with being incredibly controlling, implied to beat her son. Her treatment has left the poor guy an emotional wreck.
- An Aesop: Underdogs can prevail with The Power of Friendship.
- Artistic License
- Neha describes hentai as anime where the woman are ravaged by tentacles which is technically true, but Hentai is an American label for any Japanese anime and manga porn and is not limited to just tentacles.
- Dating in the workplace is considered unprofessional; there is no way Nick and Dana would get away with making out in the office.
- Authority in Name Only: While Lyle is the ostensible leader of Team Lyle, he's an awkward nerd barely any older than Yo-Yo, Neha and Stuart who is more or less treated as their peer once Billy and Nick step up into the role of Team Dad. To his credit, it was only through his judgment that the two of them were able to enter the internship program at all and he's shown to take charge when it actually comes time to coordinate coding work for a project.
- Automated Automobiles: Billy and Nick attempt to flag down a car on Google's campus to ask for directions when they first arrive. It turns out to be one of Google's driverless cars.
- Bad Boss: Billy and Nick's old boss Sammy Boscoe shuts down his business without telling them despite their years of excellent service to him and then calls them obsolete relics who have no future in the modern age.
- Bar Brawl: At a strip club.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Stuart and Neha are initially pretty hostile toward each other but end the movie becoming a couple.
- Big Brother Instinct: Billy and Nick begin to take on this mindset for their entire team, even their manager Lyle.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just as the administrator is about to announce the winner of the assessment, a video animation starts playing and Team Lyle bursts through the doors with free pizza for everyone.
- Bookends: Near the beginning of the movie after Nick and Billy lose their jobs Nick gets a job working for his sisters's Jerkass boyfriend selling mattresses only for Billy to show up and convince him to try and get jobs at Google. Near the end, during Billy's 10-Minute Retirement he gets a job working for a Jerkass selling motorized scooters when Nick shows up to convince him to go back to Google.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Zach, the fat intern who Graham reluctantly recruits into his team due to his academic skills and spends the rest of the movie insulting and abusing.
- Sid, the member of the internship board who is never able to finish any of his speeches before getting cut off by Chetty.
- Calling The Old Woman Out: Yo-Yo is finally able to take a stand against his mother, which earns him a thumb-up from his father.
- The Cameo:
- Will Ferrell has an uncredited appearance as the obnoxious mattress salesman dating Nick's sister.
- John Goodman also has an uncredited role as Nick and Billy's old boss Sammy Boscoe.
- Sergey Brin appears twice.
- Chekhov's Gunman: It is Headphones, aka Andrew, who ultimately influences the decision for Lyle's team to be hired.
- Chivalrous Pervert:
- Nick is a serial dater who has never been in a relationship that's lasted longer than three months and is very proactive in his pursuit of Dana, but is a kind and courteous guy all-around who genuinely puts the work in needed to show that he takes both his future at Google and with her seriously. Dana even acknowledges this when she finally caves and agrees to go on a date with him:
Dana: You were supposed to pack a decade worth of bad dates into one night, remember? But so far, you've been... totally fine.- Neha is a Yaoi Fangirl who is outspoken about her cosplay fetish and love for erotic fanfiction and hentai, but is otherwise probably the nicest and most emotionally balanced member of Team Lyle's three youngest members.
- Creative Closing Credits: The names and titles appear as if they're part of various Google products, like Google Translate, Google+, and such.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Stuart is fairly stoic and responds to almost everything with a dry quip initially. He becomes a bit more open as he spends more time with Team Lyle, but he remains very snarky.
- While Graham isn't quite as deadpan as Stuart is, he's still very, very snarky and rude. His haughty British accent certainly helps sell him as this trope.
- Defrosting Ice Queen:
- Dana is at first cold and dismissive towards Nick, but gradually opens up to him as he proves that he's serious about both her and the job.
- Stuart is a male example, beginning as the most openly hostile member of Team Lyle but eventually becoming just as loyal as the rest of the group.
- Digging Yourself Deeper / Genre Blind: When you're already in trouble, and you demand to speak to someone in authority, and then an insignificant-seeming guy who's always just been hanging around in the background walks up and presents himself, the appropriate response is not to ask who he's supposed to be, all hostile-like!
- Also applies to Billy and Nick when they repeatedly give outrageously inappropriate answers to Mr. Chetty's questions about workplace etiquette.
- The Dog Bites Back: Zach finally stands up to Graham with a sharp punch to the crotch at the end of the movie.
- Do Not Adjust Your Set: Team Lyle hijacking the video screen for their animation during the movie's climax.
- Don't Try This at Home: Do not break fraternization regulations at your workplace, and definitely do not take pictures of yourself or your friends getting drunk at a strip club. Both are very likely to wreck your career.
- Dumbass Has a Point:
- Averted during the first challenge, where they are looking for a bug in the code. Billy and Nick's out-of-the-box thinking doesn't get them anywhere other than a Snipe Hunt.
- Played straight later when Billy comes up with his idea for an app that asks a quiz question before sending off a drunk text message.
- Easily-Distracted Referee: Graham wins the Quidditch match through blatant cheating after he distracts the referee.
- Eating Lunch Alone: Billy and Nick are initially forced to do this when even their teammates refuse to sit with them.
- Endearingly Dorky: Lyle is an awkward nerd and a bit of a tryhard, but he's also rather cute and very likable when he stops trying to act cool.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The silent, headphone-wearing coder is only known as "Headphones" by the rest of the cast. His true identity is Andrew Anderson, the head of Google Search.
- Evil Brit: Max Minghella plays Graham as a smarmy, no holds barred competitor who takes every opportunity to degrade everyone else around him. This trope is played with at the end when Headphones, tells him that his accent is "Bullshit", implying that Graham is faking the Brit part of the trope to make himself sound cooler.
- Evil Counterpart: Randy, Billy's temporary new partner when he goes back to being a salesman, serves as this to the main duo. While he is similarly recognized as an excellent salesman and engages in several pre-sale rituals comparable to the ones they do, he is also a callous bastard who only bonds with clients as a means to an end and deliberately pushes faulty products to keep them coming back for business.
- Fanservice: The entire stripclub sequence, especially in the unrated version.
- Flipping the Bird: Neha to Graham during the movie's climax.
- Geek Physiques: Zach is overweight and a Harvard computer science student with top-level SAT scores. His smarts cause Graham to reluctantly recruit him onto his team but his weight also makes him a prime target for Graham's bullying.
- Groin Attack: The man in the wheelchair turns into an Extremity Extremist and gives Nick a good punch in the balls.
- Also Neha effectively uses this technique against her opponent in the Bar Brawl.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: Invoked by the appropriately-named "Headphones", also known as Andrew, head of Search.
- Henpecked Husband: From what little we see of him, Yo-Yo's father is just as put-upon by his wife as his son is.
- Hidden Depths:
- Billy is fluent in Mandarin.
- Nick proves himself to actually have the skills needed to become a competent coder once he starts applying himself.
- Headphones comes across as an antisocial savant obsessed with coding and nothing but reveals himself to value compassion and people skills just as much, if not more due to lacking them himself.
- Hopeless with Tech: Played with. Both Billy and Nick are middle-aged men who begin the movie with no knowledge or experience with computers, but Nick ends up becoming surprisingly proficient as he begins attending seminars. While Billy remains the weakest link on their team in terms of technical knowledge, he is able to become reasonably competent after a nightlong crash course with Headphones.
- Impossible Hourglass Figure: The woman Nick's brother-in-law decides to assist in the mattress store. It's the first thing he even notices about her.
- Insistent Terminology: It's online, not on the line.
- Ironic Echo: "Time to fake an injury." First said when Graham deliberately hurts Zach during the Quidditch match to get the referee to call a foul and then said again when Zach punches Graham in the crotch at the end of the movie.
- Jerkass:
- Graham is an abrasive bully who is only kind toward people he believes have the authority needed to give him what he wants.
- Billy and Nick's old boss Sammy Boscoe shuts down his business without telling them despite their years of excellent service to him and then calls them obsolete relics who have no future in the modern age.
- Nick's sister's boyfriend Kevin is generally loud and obnoxious, and ogles an attractive female client in a completely inappropriate way.
- Billy's temporary new partner Randy exploits the elderly for profit and brags about it openly.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Stuart is aloof and mouthy, but ultimately a good guy who ends up on great terms with the rest of Team Lyle.
- Chetty is incredibly strict and doubtful of Nick and Billy's prospects as employees, but is otherwise a Reasonable Authority Figure who doesn't discount their efforts and is revealed to have been the deciding vote that secured their place in the internship program in the first place.
- Just in Time: At the very last moment Team Lyle rushes in to hand over their results for the Sales challenge which goes on to win them the competition.
- King Incognito: The slovenly savant Headphones is eventually revealed to be the head of Google Search.
- Left the Background Music On: The opening song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette turns out to be playing in-universe on the car radio.
- Likes Older Women: Randy brags about the numerous affairs he's had with his geriatric clients as though it's something to be proud of, and even propositions Billy to what appears to be a foursome with two elderly women.
- Married to the Job: Dana is a workaholic who spurns all of Nick's initial advances due to them distracting her from her work.
- Nervous Wreck: A lifetime of living under a ruthless Education Mama has left Yo-Yo a high-strung wreck who pinches himself as punishment whenever he believes he has made a mistake. He loosens up as he bonds with the rest of his team.
- Never My Fault: When Andrew announces that Team Lyle are the winners as they showed their ‘Googliness’ by working as a team, Graham immediately starts criticising his own group for not showing team spirit, ignoring the fact that the reason they didn’t have that was because he insisted on trying to control everything rather than letting the rest of the group contribute and balance things out.
- Nice Guy: Both Billy and Nick are outgoing, friendly, and considerate with everyone that they interact with, and even take Graham's taunting in measured stride. It's exactly because they're such nice, considerate guys that they make excellent salesmen.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
- The three younger members of Team Lyle consist of the outgoing and friendly Neha, the sharp-tongued Deadpan Snarker Stuart, and the high-strung Nervous Wreck Yo-Yo.
- The three senior members of the internship program also count: with the kind yet put-upon Sid being the Nice, the hard-nosed Chetty being the Mean, and the Defrosting Ice Queen Dana being the In-Between.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Chetty explains to Nick and Billy that he himself came to Google with an unorthodox background, which is why he decided to give them the internship spots so they could have the opportunity to prove themselves.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: Stuart is a bit older than most examples (he's about to enter his senior year of college), but otherwise fits this trope perfectly as a young person overly dependent on his phone and indifferent to the world around him.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: See 10-Minute Retirement
- Precision F-Strike: When Nick sees the guy dressed as the golden snitch.Nick: Who the fuck is this now?
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Lyle's attempts at seeming cool always enter this territory, complete with awkward slang.
- Previews Pulse: The sound effect can be heard before the Quidditch game begins.
- Product Placement: Averted. While the movie is filled to the brim with Google products, Google received no money from this. The only explanation is that the director has a fetish for Google.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: Graham is a brown-noser who only has any kind words to say to people he believes can give him what he wants. He even dismisses Chetty as "a glorified babysitter" after he favors Team Lyle over him. Not long after, Andrew a.k.a. "Headphones" reveals he saw him as this right from the beginning and his attitude combined with his poor understanding of Google's core values has ensured he will never be given a full-time role at the company.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Team Lyle is led by an awkward nerd barely any older than most of his charges who tries too hard to seem cool and is made up of two tech-illiterate middle-aged men, a high-strung Mama's Boy with No Social Skills, a perverted Cosplay Otaku Girl, and an abrasive phone addict.
- Rapid-Fire Typing: Headphones is typing rapidly throughout the lunch scene to establish him as an uber coder seemingly disconnected from the world around him.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: One review complained about the made up words "Noogler" and "Googley" when those are terms actually used at Google.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Graham gives one to Billy at the sauna, noting that he himself doesn't need to win but simply wait for Billy to screw up as he always does. Cue: Billy failing at the Help Desk challenge.
- Recycled In Space: It's a pretty standard underdog college movie plot at Google!
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: While both Nick and Billy are generally laid-back guys, Billy is the more driven and dominant half of the pair while Nick tends to just go with the flow. This is most apparent during their sales pitches, where Billy leads the conversation while Nick acts as a buffer to keep things flowing.
- Rogue Juror: Lyle is taking a stand defending Billy and Nick's application against the other members of the council who wanted them out immediately.
- Rousing Speech: Billy gives a Believe-In-Yourself speech to the team when they are way behind at the Quidditch game.
- Nick gives one to Billy to make him return from his 10-Minute Retirement.
- Rule of Cool: One wonders how throwing pizza slices through the air is supposed to work without making a huge mess.
- Rule of Drama: According to the writers, this is the reason Mr. Chetty is so unrealistically strict.
- Running Gag:
- Yo-Yo punishing himself for a failure. To the point where his plucking his eyebrow leaves him with only one near the end and Nick has to draw one on for him.
- Mr. Chetty taking the mic from Sid.
- Shout-Out: Quite a few of them.
- "People have a deep mistrust of machines. Haven't you seen Terminator? Or 2? Or 3? Or 4?"
- Billy motivates the team by referencing Flashdance
- The interns try to sidetrack Billy and Nick by having them look for Professor Charles Xavier.
- The entire Quidditch sequence. Lampshaded by Nick. "What does this even have to do with computers?"
- At the end, Lyle refers to Marielena as my Khaleesi.
- Self-Punishment Over Failure: Yo-Yo Santos plucks his eyebrows when he fails at something, as his Tiger Mom taught him to do.
- The Smurfette Principle: Neha is the only female member of Team Lyle, and is outnumbered by the boys 5/1.
- Snipe Hunt: The rest of Team Lyle send Billy and Nick on a search for Professor Charles Xavier
- Sore Loser: Graham at the end against his teammates, which earns him a The Dog Bites Back.
- Stealth Pun: The character Yo-Yo is defined by having an overly-controlling mother. The mother goes unnamed, so it would be reasonable to refer to her as Yo-Yo's Ma, which sounds too close to the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma for it to be a coincidence.
- The Stinger: In the middle of the end credits, there is a 'Lost Cosplay Scene' with Will Ferrell as Boba Fett.
- Token Trio: The three youngest members of Team Lyle consist of the Filipino Yo-Yo, the Indian-American and female Neha, and the white Stuart.
- Tsundere: Nick lampshades Stuart being one, commenting on how he's going to enjoy it when Stuart starts opening up to him.
- Mr Chetty. As Lyle points out he was the deciding vote that helped them get in.
- Unrated Edition: The unrated version has some additional scenes, considerably more swearing and quite a bit of nudity in the strip-club sequence.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The moment Billy declares that him studying all night long is going to win them the Help Desk challenge, one knew this would not turn out well.
- Urban Legend Love Life: Neha introduces herself by bragging about all the kinky cosplay parties she attends, but later admits to Billy that she's a virgin who has never even had a boyfriend.
- Wacky Startup Workplace: The film, which is set at Google, portrays the working environment as fun and full of amenities like nap pods, massage rooms, beach volleyball, free food, and even Quidditch. With the exception of the Quidditch, this is Truth in Television.
- Walk and Talk: A variation with Billy and Nick having a discussion while riding Google bicycles.
- Workaholic: Dana is always seen coming and going from meetings and only starts to lighten up as Nick chips away at her.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Billy turns a corner after extensive training and seems to ace the tech support competition, only for it to turn out that he forgot to log in and log any of his calls, which automatically forfeits his entire team.
- Yaoi Fangirl: Neha is a fan of slash fiction and makes an offhand comment early on about shipping Nick and Billy.
