So is this The Devil Wears Prada meets Analyze This?! Warner Bros sure hopes so...
You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of The Intern...
The Devil Wears Prada and Analyze This are not only two of Anne Hathaway and Robert DeNiro's
most famous films, but were also crucial to the development of their careers. And fascinatingly,
the two films' stars were headed in different directions. The Devil Wears Prada seemed the
perfect culmination of the films that had put Hathaway on the map and won her many fans
- The Princess Diaries One and Two, Ella Enchanted! Yet despite her success in Prada and Get Smart,
Hathaway seemed eager to run in the opposite direction - which brought down her personal
box office numbers and let to "Hatha-hate", yet also got her an Oscar. As for DeNiro,
he already had TWO Oscars and was a Hollywood icon, yet his box office numbers were seriously
lagging. Running TOWARDS comedy not only saved his career but gave it new life, interestingly,
just as a comedic turn in The Devil Wears Prada did for fellow prestige Oscar winner
Meryl Streep. She also has embraced comedy. And now it seems Hathaway might be considering
returning to comedy as well. She's got her Oscar, and while Christopher Nolan put her
in some big movies he couldn't sell her to moviegoers. And don't feel too bad, Anne,
he couldn't sell fellow Oscar winner Marion Cotillard either. And with seriously lagging
box office numbers herself, Hathaway seriously needs another box office win. So who better
to turn to than writer-director Nancy Meyers, right? Meyers has a history of not only making
successful comedies but, in the process, allowing her leading ladies to keep their prestige
status. Helen Hunt in What Women Want. Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give. Cameron
Diaz and Kate Winslet in The Holiday. And Meryl Streep in It's Complicated. Hathaway
does seem to fit with that group, right? And while on the surface The Intern might seem
like a slum dunk for Meyers, Hathaway and De Niro, well, there are a few potential hiccups.
First, there's that infamous Hatha-hate, as well as a string of recent box office duds
for De Niro. Audiences simply might not be interested in either actor right now, just
as they might not be into adult interns considering how Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's The Internship
flopped. And then there's Meyers, who snuck in a message here about how guys in general
just aren't up to snuff these days, and women not-so-secretly miss the days when "men were
men". Yeah, I can see why that's not a big part of the ad campaign. So, will those elements
be enough to trip up The Intern, or is this a combo too big to fail?