The Intern

I do not often blog about movie reviews. I have a few times in the past, but this past evening my wife and I settled down on the couch for a nice movie night. We had rented "The Intern" which I had heard really good reviews on, but assumed it would just be another sweet Anne Hathaway flick. Boy was I wrong. It was an incredible look at egalitarianism specifically with a stay at home dad and a career driven mom.

I found the movie to be hilarious, heart warming, and a very good critique both of our society with millennials like myself and how many people still, in 2015, treat egalitarian couples. I want to start by talking about the look at the culture of our society with millennials that it looks at. The movie plays on the idea of a company run and operated completely by people in their 20s, which are what at many would call millennials. From the first few minutes there are many references to Instagram and celebrating how many likes the company has received that day. Then the company, About the Fit, decides to hire retirees as "Senior Interns" as an outreach program and thus begins the culture shock and misunderstandings between the millennials and the retired folks serving as interns. It was rather comical and heartwarming seeing De Niro's character helping the younger interns out in their personal lives.

The other element to the movie that I absolutely adored was the egalitarian nature. The story follows Jules Ostin as she strives to navigate life as the founder of an online fashion company while balancing life at home with her stay-at-home-dad husband as well as their lovely daughter.  

SPOILER ALERT: The movie navigates what she has to go through when she drops her daughter off at school. Many of the mothers seem to be ashamed at her and poke fun at her life because they are not used to a career driven woman. There is even a moment when she learns of her husbands affair and her immediate reaction is to put the blame on herself and the fact that he "can't handle her working full time and needed to have a girlfriend to help his masculinity." Luckily, Robert De Niro jumps to the rescue by explaining that she should not take the blame and it was her husband's own fault for what he was doing, not hers. She should be able to be the one with the career and he should not fault her for that.

Another moment that really stood out to me was after a small Oceans Eleven themed heist De Niro's character commits with the other interns. After their successful mission Hathaway takes her interns to a bar to celebrate and in her tipsy state she gives a speech that rings so true to our society. She talks about how their generation was the one of "take your daughter to work day" and that they focused so much on helping girls become working women that they seemed to turn men to boys. There became less of a focus on developing males as there was for females which then resulted in many males not acting like men, but instead acting like boys--not dressing professionally, not knowing how to do many things, being lazy, and always getting caught up in video games. In many ways the genders just went to opposite extremes. It makes the excellent point that both women and men need to be encouraged to develop and pursue their dreams. Both need to be pushed a little to achieve. It was this line, among many, that really showed the audience that feminism (or egalitarianism) is not just about allowing women to work and men to stay at home, but it is in fact about empowering both women and men as equals.

Overall it was an incredible movie that, and my wife can attest to this, I "oohed" and "awwwed" throughout the entire two hours of the film. I would greatly recommend this to anyone as an incredible egalitarian movie. If you like analyzing today's culture and seeing an excellent portrayal of what many egalitarian couples deal with I would recommend this movie.