Like most beer-loving bro-dawgs my age, I have fond memories of Wedding Crashers. It wasn’t high art, but it worked, and it’s still hard for me to see Bradley Cooper as anything but an A-holey Maryland WASP. I never would’ve guessed Vince Vaughn would go the next eight years without making a single funny movie, but here we are. Nonetheless, I’m more than willing to see these two relive the magic, and even if the guy from Cheaper by the Dozen and Date Night probably wasn’t the best choice to direct comedy, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson becoming interns at Google seems like a perfectly cromulent premise. There’s plenty opportunity for wacky characters and cameos and fish-out-of-water hijinks. But I think I’ve isolated the problem here, and hear me out: it seems that they forgot to put in jokes. Those are important in comedy.
Ah, the old nutshot in the trailer (2:28). Where have we seen that before?
Back in the heady days of aught four, aught five, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn were the hot young comic actors in Hollywood, just a couple of fresh faced young prodigies churning out success after success. But, like the Tenenbaum children, Owen and Vince went their own direction for a few years, and sort of lost their way. Owen had a breakdown a la Richie, and Vince just sort of got lazier and lazier until Couples Retreat happened. They both must’ve done some soul searching and realized they were never as good as when they were together, so now they’re back under one roof, so to speak, with The Internship. It’s directed by Shawn Levy, who’s not really known for comedy, unless you count Date Night, or Cheaper by the Dozen, which I don’t, but then Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin doesn’t have a lot of other sterling credits either. The important thing is that they’re a couple of grown men acting like college kids again – first frat guys, then wedding crashers, and now, with a fish-out-of-water twist: interns at Google.
Clearly, the hook is getting 30 and 40-something dudes into a situation where they have to do college/early adulthood stuff. Here are some other ideas we’ve been kicking around:
Rave Dudes
The Shitty Apartment
Busmen
Adult Kickball
Backpackers
Party Bus Drivers
Hook-Up Guys (aka Swingers)
Improv Class
Bachelor Party Planners
Online Daters
Car Pool
The Valets
Booze Cruise
Hostel Crashers
Alumni Weekend
Bed and Breakfast Bros
Groupon Getaway
Daytona Dads
All Nighter (Literally just two 40-year-olds trying to stay up all night and function the following day)
(thanks to Burnsy and Danger and Halpern for a couple of those titles).
I live in San Francisco, so obviously this is the most important story of the day for me. After the 49ers beat the Lions 27 – 19 in the late game yesterday, coach Jim Harbaugh (Commie Jesus, as we gluten-free homosexuals call him) presented the game ball to pass-catching doo wop singer Michael Crabtree, and introduced a couple special guests, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Turns out the ice cream-lovers are in town this week to shoot a buddy comedy called The Internship.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, who (in)famously paired up for the 2005 blockbuster “Wedding Crashers,” are together again in a new R-rated romp, “The Internship.” The two will play recently laid-off fortysomethings who hatch a diabolical scheme to land coveted internships at Google.
“We get free food, we get to play ping pong and take naps,” Vaughn said of the role in a recent interview with The Huffington Post. “We find a way to get into the intern program and try to get a job there. It’s fun to go back and do some R-rated comedies again.” Vaughn himself penned the screenplay for the film, which will even feature a cameo by Will Ferrell. [HuffPo]
Sadly, it’s being directed by Night at the Museum‘s Shawn Levy, who’s only directed decent comedy if you count Real Steel. Nonetheless, I’ve got some pictures of the momentous occasion on the following pages. Try to guess if I included a Photoshopped picture of Vince Vaughn eating ice cream. SPOILER ALERT: I totally included a Photoshopped picture of Vince Vaughn eating ice cream. Vince Vaughn was born to ice cream. To see Vince Vaughn eat ice cream is to see a creature perfectly in its element, like watching water bead off a duck’s back, or me in my underwear, Photoshopping pictures of Vince Vaughn eating ice cream into stuff.
One of my favorite special-interest websites is Letters of Note, which curates all sorts of correspondence between prominent figures. Today’s offering was advertised as “This day in 2006, Steely Dan wrote to Luke Wilson and complained about his brother’s latest movie, You, Me & Dupree.”
My God, if they gave an award for intriguing news ledes… Anyway, it seems the acclaimed dad-rock pioneers wrote an open letter to Luke Wilson on their website, to complain about You, Me & Dupree, which, besides being a crappy Kate Hudson movie (that Owen Wilson also co-produced), had a tenuous connection with Steely Dan, on account of their song, “Cousin Dupree.” Is this making sense yet? Just read.
Hey man – it’s, like, Don and Walt, we’re the guys from Steely Dan, the group, we won those Grammies that time, maybe you recall? You know, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”? “Reelin’ in the Years?” “Hey Nineteen”? “Babylon Sisters”? Right, that’s us! So how’s it going?
Cool, we hope. We both really liked that “Bottle Rocket” movie that you and your brother did. We both thought it was way rocking! – even though the end was a little sad, you know, the overall thing was so great. In fact, it’s the only movie that you and your brother did that we can really agree on, the two of us… we usually like the same kind of things, but not always exactly the same things, if you can get to that. [...]
Olivia Wilde made the cover of British GQ’s new Comedy Special issue devoted to “Kings of Comedy… and Olivia Wilde, Brooklyn Decker, Anna Faris, and Diora Baird.” Normally I’d make fun of that terrible attempt at pandering to the lowest common denominator, but come on – have you seen Kate Upton in the Carl’s Jr. commercial? I’m more concerned with the inclusion of Owen Wilson on the list of “Kings.” Did they at least mention the people who wrote the lines that make him seem funny? It’s only fair.
Wilde, though, while not the first woman I’d mention when discussing sexy female comedic actresses (Hello, Malin Akerman), really should be shoehorned into any subject possible for the sake of getting her to make her boobs jiggle, because that’s what this is all about. For some glorious reason, GQ had Wilde record a three-second video that feature her simply touching both of her boobs. Jason Sudeikis, you are one lucky bastard.
