Is work making you especially anxious lately? You’re not alone – multiple industries are experiencing various degrees of disruption as we barrel toward a likely recession. I myself work in media, which was a struggling business long before I got into it, but is now dealing with the rise of AI search putting the squeeze on traffic to articles like this one. Over the past few months, I could feel my stress level growing every day I logged on.
So, as SR‘s Senior Editor of New Movies, I did what I always do to relax: watched old movies. And it helped. Using film and television to temporarily escape from the problems of daily life is nothing new, but there’s something about watching a movie from a different era of Hollywood that just resets your rhythms. (Don’t believe me? Next time something on the news freaks you out, fire up a ’30s screwball comedy or a nice, broody noir and tell me you don’t feel better!)
Recently, though, I found myself in need of something stronger. I didn’t just want a good movie, I wanted a good workplace movie. So, I checked my streaming services and found the perfect thing – and just in time, too.
The Intern Is Now Streaming For Free On Prime Video, But Not For Much Longer
If you’re looking to be comforted by a movie, it’s hard to go wrong with Nancy Meyers. She made her feature directorial debut in 1998 with the Lindsay Lohan-starring The Parent Trap, and in addition to cultivating a manicured, pleasing aesthetic of affluence, her movies glide. There’s a certain Hollywood smoothness to them that makes it easy to turn yourself over to them for a couple hours.
The last feature she directed (because studios won’t fund her next one) was 2015’s The Intern, featuring the friendliest Robert De Niro you’ve ever seen in the title role. A retired widower looking for something to fill the hole in his life, De Niro’s Ben decides to apply for the new senior intern program at About the Fit, an e-commerce fashion startup. He then ends up assigned to work personally with Jules (Anne Hathaway), the passionate but scattered founder and CEO, who doesn’t really want an intern at all.
The Intern got mixed reviews upon release, but with all due respect to my profession, critics can sometimes be too dismissive of warm-hug movies. It’s a delightful mix of workplace comedy and generation-gap drama that envelops you in a particular kind of success – not the always-hungry, soul-eroding variety, but one that subconsciously tells you all is right with the world. These characters are deserving of money and its comforts, and they find themselves so justly rewarded it’s unquestioned.
Everyone tends to look good in a Nancy Meyers movie, but Hathaway is an especially radiant presence in this one, and gives a great performance. De Niro does too, inhabiting this gentle soul so completely that, by the end, it’s actually hard to remember having ever been afraid of him on screen.
If you’re a Prime Video subscriber in the US, all this workplace joy can be yours – but only for the next few days. According to JustWatch, The Intern leaves the service after October, and while it’ll still be rentable in the usual places, there’s no telling when or where it’ll pop up for free again.
So, do yourself a favor, take a break from the obligatory horror movie marathons, and cosy up with The Intern. Your blood pressure will thank you.
- Release Date
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September 25, 2015
- Runtime
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121 minutes
- Director
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Nancy Meyers
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