Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
70-year-old widower Ben Whittaker has discovered that retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Seizing an opportunity to get back in the game, he becomes a senior intern at an online fashion site, founded and run by Jules Ostin.
The Intern is a warm, crowd-pleasing comedy elevated significantly by its two leads. Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway share genuinely charming chemistry, and De Niro in particular delivers a quietly excellent performance as the dignified, old-fashioned Ben Whittaker. The film's premise—a 70-year-old senior intern at a millennial startup—is a pleasant fish-out-of-water setup, though it rarely subverts expectations or digs deep into its more interesting tensions. Cinematography is competent and pleasantly sun-drenched New York but unremarkable. The ending feels rushed and somewhat unsatisfying, brushing aside the marital subplot without fully resolving it in a meaningful way. Novelty is moderate—the role-reversal mentorship angle has some freshness, but the execution is fairly conventional rom-com/feel-good territory. Overall a likable, well-acted but formulaic crowd-pleaser.