The InternRating:
Release Date: 17 April, 2001 Retail Price: $14.99 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
The Intern Reviews
Fashionably Bad
I won't claim that this is the worst movie ever although many would award it at least a honorable mention. I watched this because "Dominique Swain" is one of the stars; she is the only one associated with this thing who has actually been able to find real work in the industry since its release. This was her first real career stumble and she probably wishes now that she had used an assumed name and worn a mask.
Imagine film students Leah and Vincenzo from the cable show "Film School" (The Tisch School of the Acts at NYU) collaborating on a feature length pseudo-documentary as their class project. They talk Swain into going with them to a New York City fashion magazine office for a couple of days. They tell the office staff that everyone has won a free week of acting for the camera lessons. They get another $10,000 from Parker and Jennifer to buy film (Parker's Visa card again), and reuse their script from 1999 when they made the unwatchable (and fortunately unwatched) "Fashionably LA".
Apparently the objective of the screenplay is to show the "real world" of fashion modeling through the eyes of an intern. The intern is played nicely by Swain who manages to inject some wry humor into many of her scenes and to somehow restrain herself from totally overwhelming the inexperienced cast around her (hence two stars instead of one).
The problem is that the premise, "blowing the lid off the fashion magazine scene", is of interest only to insiders who already know everything the film is about to reveal. Which is pretty much the same with any vocation. What next, a movie that "blows the lid off the Cincinnati CPA scene"?
Give It A Break
Bad reviews abound for this straight-to-video feature - lot's of ugly sniping about the fashion business, gay stereotypes, superficiality, etc. But, please, let's get real here. Not every movie has to have deep subtext and meaning - especially not movies about the fashion business. Written and executive produced by Jill Kopelman, (daughter of the owner of the House of Chanel) and Caroline Doyle, the inside jokes and cameos run rampant in a movie that just misses being very clever. With a dreary romantic comedy subplot, Dominique Swain, most notable for *Lolita*, plays Jocelyn, an intern at *Skirt* magazine, who becomes involved in fashion espionage. A very thin premise, to be sure, with a John Waters-ish feel to it, but with a breathless E! TV approach to fashion and comedy. Also like a John Waters film, *Intern* depends heavily on onscreen slapstick and cameo performances- though since it's not John Waters, of course, we miss seeing Patty Hearst. Peggy Lipton is a pleasant surprise as Fashion Editor, Roxanne Rochet, a typical fashion victim, given to such statements as "Forget the herbal wrap - I want a Himalayan rejuvenation lichen-berry acid peel." She and her staff are complete caricatures of fashionistas (they are devoting nine pages of their current issue to making wheelchairs the chic accessory), but they are right on the money - especially Leilani Bishop as the vacuous, self-absorbed supermodel, and David Deblinger as the queeny art director. Paulina Porizkova, Anna Thompson, and comedienne Kathy Griffin are a little one-dimensional, but funny as well. Joan Rivers is Joan Rivers, and that's all we need to say about that. As stated earlier, it's not a particularly deep movie, but to paraphrase Karl Lagerfeld, fashion is not the same thing as feeding the hungry and curing the ill.
More Customer Reviews (9 total)
You like The Intern?
|
© 2004, 2005, 2006 DVD Booty | Don't Plunder Our Cache of Booty, Matey!
Hosting made possible by donations from Debt Counseling Hotline, Debt Relief Clearinghouse, and cash advance
