A Review Too Far - The Intern

This week our cinema geeks review Zucker Brothers' spy/surf movie spoof, Top Secret, the "find yourself" film Camp Takota, and out in theaters now, The Intern.

Top Secret! stars Val Kilmer as the American pop star, Nick Rivers, who is thrust into the middle of a Cold War conspiracy. After a chance meeting with a woman on the run from the Secret Police, Nick goes on a roundabout adventure to stop the East German government from using a secret weapon to destroy NATO's navy. Campy and fun, Top Secret! shows that you don't have to make a perfect movie, just an enjoyable one.

Camp Takota is a late-bloomer's film about a disenchanted young writer who loses both her job and her fiance on the same day. Distraught and more than a little hungover, she hitches a ride to her childhood summer camp and gets a job as a counselor where she reconnects with old friends, tries to forget her troubles, and is wooed by the attractive young farmer from down the county road. More a Lifetime-movie-of-the-week than anything else, Camp Takota is filled with feel-good cliches and terribly convenient plot twists, but still manages to get a good line or two in... occasionally.

The Intern is yet another feel-good click in which Robert De Niro plays a retired executive who is bored with his life an needs a change. He finds that in the experimental "Senior Intern Program" at a hip dotcom sales firm headed by Anne Hathaway. The two bond, share experiences, and lean on each other in the sweetest ways... though, to be fair, most of the leaning is done by Anne's character, Jules, as she absorbs the wealth of knowledge and confidence that De Niro's Ben can offer. The film is sweet and endearing, but suffers from the fact that Ben is just too perfect and the conflicts he miraculously solves with style and class are as forced as can be.