I've lost a lot of respect for Robert De Niro over the past 20 years. It seems as though he will do just about anything if there is a paycheck involved and very little of what has come of that has resulted in anything that most people would consider worth watching, let alone noteworthy; but i was surprised by a 2015 film that I accidentally clicked on today that made me feel good after watching it (and while watching it) and it was a really wonderful mistake on my part.
[src](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7e/93/a5/7e93a573ab8f7f333f99a10a1e0a70c5.jpg)The plot isn't completely implausible but at little bit I suppose in that a 70 year old man applies for an internship with a modern company and ends up getting hired because his video was something inspired someone in the interviewing process. I think we can all kind of agree that unless you are Robert De Niro that this application would have been denied outright but still, it is necessary for the plot to unfold.
He gets hired as an unpaid intern for a fashion company that is run by an overworked and extremely ambitious young woman whose company expanded a lot more rapidly than she had planned. At first, the boss names "Jules" (Anne Hathaway) doesn't really want him around and encourages him to just stay in the background but due to his work ethic of many more years of being alive than her he kind of refuses to do so. Eventually (and completely impractically) his old-school methods of dealing with problems start to appeal to the tech-savvy people employed by this company and they start to look to him for advice.
[src](https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/55bf68f89e9755183d97fad2/master/pass/the-intern-trailer-2.jpg)As someone that is approximately halfway between the age of De Niro's character and the people he works with, I can kind of relate to how interpersonal relationships are actually important to not just business, but life in general. This is a phenomenon that we are starting to see emerge in business these days as businesses start to convert to a more "human touch" approach combined with technology in real life. Businesses that don't have someone that is contactable at all outside of a webpage are starting to get burned by a society that is kind of fed up with a computer trying to figure out all of your problems when it is incapable of doing so.
In this regard, I felt the movie was quite touching and also real-to-life because let's be honest folks, we went a bit nuts with the technology controlling everything in our lives. De Niro's character represents a different time that actually breathes new life into the company that he works for and while it is a work of fiction I think that there is something that actually could apply to real life business here. People don't want to deal with a FAQ section as it turns out. It was fun and easier when it was new, but now people are starting to want to have more human connection especially to get things done quicker and with a greater sense of care.
Ben Whittaker (De Niro) does exactly that to the company he starts working for and while they try to push him to the side and treat him like a token Grandfather at the start, the company starts to realize that his methods of dealing with people inside the company as well as outside on a human-to-human level spoke to me personally as someone that is constantly subjected to this with every transaction that I make in life.
We are starting to lose our humanity with technology taking control of everything that we do
This movie speaks to me perhaps because I am a bit older but I think that a lot of people that have ever been stuck in an endless loop of a call center or "help section" of a website can probably relate to the underlying message that is in this film.
Should I watch it?
I don't really rate De Niro as an actor, especially not in recent years where he has become an activist and also taken on any role that was offered to him regardless of how shite the script was but this one is an exception to that rule. Since he **actually is** around the age of the person that he is portraying in the film and is capable of coming across as a kind and determined person this role works out really well for him.They do use music quite a lot to pull at your heartstrings while the film is progressing but I don't know if it was their intention or not, but the message about depending on technology too much for one's life is quite profound in this film and I really appreciated it for that very reason.
The ending is a bit weak (which I won't reveal) but the ride to get there was a lot of fun and it is for that reason that I highly recommend seeing this film especially if you were born after 1985.
