The Intern review: misogyny, dramedy and snivelling

Retired widower Ben (De Niro) signs up for a community outreach initiative and becomes an “unlikely” intern at online fashion empire, About the Fit. The company’s founder and CEO Jules (Anne Hathaway) has little use for a senior assistant but slowly, surely Ben makes himself indispensable and impresses with his old-school methodology: Look! He’s got a briefcase!

The Intern potters along, masquerading as a fish-out-of- water comedy. And then it starts on the gender politics. Yikes. Somewhere, we are told, during the "you go, girl" generation, men lost their place in the world. Erm? Did an MRA group write this script?

Nope. This was written and directed by Nancy Meyers, who seems to have decided with ‘n-word’ logic, that because she is a woman, other women – all women – are fair game.

Thus we are treated to some of the most fantastic doublespeak, backtracks and whataboutery. “I hate women who cry at work,” sobs the woman crying at work.” Why does Ben carry a handkerchief everywhere? Because women cry all the time. There is, in fact, seldom a scene in which some gal isn’t blubbing.

As glass-ceiling breaker and mommy Jules, Anne Hathaway cries significantly more than she did playing a broken, toothless prostitute in Les Mis. The internet tells us that Anne Hathaway syndrome is synonymous with tall poppy syndrome, that's there's something about her smarts, her looks and her achievements that people don't like. With The Intern it's as if the actress has found a weak, pathetic anti-Hathaway, someone's whose achievements are bogus and who's endless sobbing acts as a sledgehammer to the "having it all" argument.

It’s sad, too, because De Niro brings an amiable twinkling charm to the role. A fun, daft caper sequence wherein he and the younger interns break into a house hints at the likeable, fluffy comedy this might have been. Instead we’re stuck with misogyny, dramedy and snivelling.