“Um Senhor Estagiário”, which Netflix renamed “O Estagiário”, is in the Top 10 of the most viewed in Brazil. It is, however, a 2015 movie, which makes it a little old by typical user standards.
This presence imposes two questions on us, both easy to answer, but no less valuable in their formulations: a) why this particular film is among the most watched; b) why does a star Robert De Niro get involved in commercial movies like this one?
We answer the first question with an obvious statement: in tragic times never before seen by anyone who is not old enough to have been contemporary with the outbreak of Spanish fever, a relief is more than necessary, a distraction that allows two hours of forgetting the current world.
To the second, we respond to the reminder that De Niro has been looking for light films for a long time, in which he can parade his charisma to a wider audience, leaving the more artistic raptures for increasingly rare works, “The Irishman” (2019), his resumption of the Scorsese partnership after "Casino" (1995).
And “The Intern” has everything to please a wide audience, being fully forgettable two hours later (until it lasts a long time, there is a film that we have already forgotten during the final signs): it is totally conciliatory, the problems it shows are easily soluble, even those who seemed unsolved; there are two actors who are practically rejection-proof, Anne Hathaway, in a role that looks like an extension of the character in “The Devil Wears Prada”, who has now become successful, but does not pretend to be the vixen that was Meryl Streep, and Robert De Niro, who makes a charming and straightforward 70 year old man who accepts a new challenge in life, return to the job market.
In the story, Hathaway is Jules Ostin, founder of a start-up that is in a dizzying expansion. He works so hard that he barely has time for his daughter and husband Matt (Anders Holm). Through a program that she approved, but does not remember having approved, the company opens a program for senior interns, and Ben Whitaker (De Niro), a retired widower, decides to apply for a challenge in the quiet and monotonous life that takes. At the same time, the company's investors want a CEO, for fear that overwork may hamper this growth. But Jules doesn't want someone who can take away the charm of the brand he created.
There are then two interesting points in the film, which are contrary to the current anger of upstart youth: the idea that a 70-year-old man can be fundamental to the smooth running of a company that does not exploit its employees; the idea of the passion that surrounds work, a passion without which doing becomes mechanical, with no meaning other than the accumulation of goods.
The film starts with an unbearable soundtrack, which we've heard in about a thousand Hollywood films, so that it is a little embarrassing to rely on such a generic soundtrack. But the direction of Nancy Meyers is that bean that helps when we just want a forgettable fun. She knows that De Niro and Hathaway the game is won, and the script she wrote is full of hooks to capture the viewer.
Forgettable, no doubt, but pleasant to see. It is more than we can say for most of this type of film in which "everyone has their reasons, but everyone understands and everything can only end well".
* Sérgio Alpendre is a film critic and professor
