BEFORE: I should probably be concerned about the fact that after a 5-day Comic Con, it takes me about a week to recover. I'm getting older, sure, but this time in addition to the usual backache and blisters from walking around so much I had to deal with a head-cold (or some kind of nerd flu) and a bladder infection, and the less said about that, the better. A week on anti-biotics and DayQuil was in order. Still, today is the first day in a week and a half that I don't have to go anywhere or do anything, so after I watch this film I plan to sleep well into Saturday afternoon.
Josh Gad carries over from "Jobs", and we move from behind the scenes at Apple to behind the scenes at Google.
THE PLOT: Two salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital age find their way into a coveted internship at Google, where they must compete with a group of young, tech-savvy geniuses.
AFTER: Well, the plan almost worked. I was awoken at about 9 this morning by the loudest thunder I'd ever heard. At first I thought that there was a massive explosion somewhere in Brooklyn. But no, it was raining so I got off the recliner and climbed the stairs and got in bed and slept until about 2 pm. I slept so long I had one of those dreams where I was trying to get home on a subway, then a bus, and I knew people on the bus and the trip never really got me closer to home. I slept so long I was even more tired when I stopped sleeping than I was before.
Forgive me for initially regarding this film as a pastiche of Vince Vaughn's previous films - you've got two irresponsible male friends (the pair from "Wedding Crashers") who try to go back and reclaim their previous glory ("Old School") by competing against younger, stronger teams in challenges ("Dodgeball"). And Vaughn is playing the type of fast-talking lovable loser he's famous for, in everything from "Swingers" to "Couples Retreat", to (I'm guessing) tomorrow's film as well. Now that I'm back I need to catch up with "True Detective", where at least he's doing a slow burn as a cool, silent crime boss.
The problem is that this really IS a mix of those previous Vince Vaughn films. OK, so they play Quidditch at Google and not dodgeball, but the end result is the same. And an internship at Google is not really the same as being in a college frat, but it's close enough. There are the rich kids, the cool kids, the mean kids, and our two heroes have to find a way to get a team of messed-up losers to come together, work together, and succeed together. Which won't be easy for a pair of washed-up, tech un-savvy salesmen who are easily three times the age of their competition.
What they do have is experience - maybe not computer experience, but life experience, and I'm glad to see that still counts for something in today's world, and today's movie plots. What's clever here is the WAYS that their life experiences come in handy, in everything from designing an app that doesn't already exist to romancing a female Google executive in a very unorthodox way. What they bring to the table is a bunch of unorthodox thinking, and it turns out that might just represent the kind of creativity that Google is looking for. In every sports movie from "The Bad News Bears" to "Major League", there's always that moment where the game looks almost over, but there's a desperation play that's never been done before, which is just crazy enough to work. These guys are nothing but desperation plays, and some of them work and some of them don't.
I liked the overall message, as unlikely as it was, which is that every member of the team is important, and you'll get farther being nice to everyone than you will if you act like a dick. It's corny, but it's the kind of philosophy that you wish were true. The film doesn't do much to enhance Google's reputation (except for showcasing the free food, plentiful bicycles and driverless cars) by pointing out that it's run by the weird fringe members of society, but maybe that's true, for all I know. The geek shall inherit the earth, and some of the kids who got bullied in school are designing web-sites and apps now, I'm fairly sure. If Google wants to be seen as a social place for anti-social people, who am I to disagree?
Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "Troy"), Aasif Mandvi (last seen in "Random Hearts"), Max Minghella (last seen in "Syriana"), Josh Brener, Dylan O'Brien, Tiya Sircar, Tobit Raphael, Eric André, Jessica Szohr, with cameos from John Goodman (last seen in "The Monuments Men"), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Melinda and Melinda"), Rob Riggle (last heard in "The Lorax"), Gary Anthony Williams (last seen in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"), B.J. Novak (last seen in "The Dictator").
RATING: 6 out of 10 nap pods
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