Old is the new cool

At this point, Robert De Niro has played just about every role imaginable: from gangsters to boxers to war veterans to Lucifer himself (or at least, “Louis Cyphre”). But he’s rarely been as quietly effective and in control as he is playing retiree Ben Whittaker in the Nancy Meyers comedy The Intern.

Here, as in real life, experience counts. De Niro plays a 70-year-old widower who worked for a phone book company for most of his career, then loses his wife shortly after retirement. His problem is, after using up his frequent flier miles to travel the world, taking Mandarin classes and doing tai chi exercises in the park most mornings, he still has lots of retirement time to fill.

He spots a flier for an e-company offering a “senior internship” program and applies — to a Zalora-like company called About the Fit run by young entrepreneur Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway).

There are the typical jokes from the 20-somethings working there about his age (“So, you graduated in 1965… What was your major? Do you remember?” “So you sold phone books? That’s, like, what people did before Google, right?”)

But we know right from the start that Ben is a Zen master. And his Zen secret is age: he knows way more about the real world than the young e-commerce crowd does; he knows how to court a girl, for instance, and he knows enough to carry a handkerchief in his coat jacket — which he wears daily while others wear hoodies and T-shirts. Why a handkerchief? “Because girls cry,” Ben points out. “It’s to offer to them, not for you.” A chivalric gesture, all but dead in the modern world.

Meyers’ script plays off such Rip Van Winkle moments: the fact that Ben has lived a full life, and is therefore wiser and more qualified to deal with day-to-day crises.

The pitch here is that seniors have way more to offer than people might think. At first, Ben is parked at a computer terminal with no assignments: few notice him, and it seems little different from being placed in an old folks’ home. But he’s efficient and persistent, and starts making friends. 

While Jules is, at first, put off by Ben’s quiet assurance and finds him “too observant,” he quickly wins her over with his gentle pace. This is part of Meyers’ message: that the modern world can be too quick about everything — like judging the energy and ability of its seniors — and it takes someone who knows how to stop and smell the roses to put things in perspective. 

And Ben is the kind of guy who’s got it all figured out. He’s been around the block, and his skills — both organizational and people-related — are like manna to the flock of 20-somethings at About the Fit.

Seniority rules: Anne Hathaway plays a young entrepreneur who needs life lessons from senior Robert De Niro in Nancy Meyers’ The Intern. Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

As Jules, Hathaway reminds us of her intern role in The Devil Wears Prada — if Andrea Sachs had taken a right turn into business instead of journalism, and cared a bit more about fashion. She’s dedicated to the company she started, but there are problems: the company’s growing too fast, and her shareholders want her to think about hiring a professional CEO to take charge of its rapid expansion. Also, she’s married to young househusband (oops, “stay-at-home dad”) Anders Holm who doesn’t seem too committed to the marriage. They have a cute young daughter whose mommy rarely shows up for school events or guacamole get-togethers. And she’s got a rough relationship with her own mother, who constantly nags her on her cell phone.

This fact naturally leads to one of those classic Nancy Meyers movie moments: when someone accidentally misuses technology and hilarity ensues, as it did with a laptop and Alec Baldwin’s nakedness in It’s Complicated. Here, it’s about a mis-sent text message and efforts to delete said text message, with Ben deploying Mission: Impossible-style tactics.

There are numerous nostalgic references to the “old days,” mostly from Jules, who compares the men of previous generations — the Jack Nicholsons and Jimmy Stewarts and, yes, Robert De Niros — to today’s crop of hoodie-wearing, video-playing, forever-adolescent males. She theorizes that her generation’s women were “raised by Oprah” to feel empowered, while the males had no big role models — so they stuck to being kids. Just ask Judd Apatow.

There’s also an underlying feminist question on the table here, about whether a women can have it all — the career and the family life — and it’s little surprise that De Niro’s senior offers just the right advice on the subject.

The Intern is a light movie, with a delicate Hollywood glaze, but it’s in the details that Meyers crafts something that goes beyond condescension or cliché — details like the vintage 1973 leather briefcase that Ben carts to work, which gains him instant hipster status among his youthful co-workers.

And speaking of vintage, De Niro does something pretty remarkable here: he makes getting old actually seem cool. Like Peter Sellers playing Chauncey Gardiner in Being There, De Niro limits himself to reaction takes, communicating much with his eyes (in one funny reference to Taxi Driver, he practices blinking in front of a mirror, because he was told “Jules doesn’t trust people who don’t blink”). De Niro’s turn is a model of restraint, and should lead to nominations.

Hathaway is likable, even playing a flawed character, and you root for their May-December bond to take root and blossom. They have good multi-generational chemistry, in that avuncular Bill Murray/Scarlett Johansson kind of way.

Supporting characters provide laughs, such as Adam Devine as an over-eager 20-something; and Rene Russo playing a senior massage therapist is as assured as a fine port wine.

Mostly, it’s nice to see Hollywood do a movie that doesn’t condescend to age, one that doesn’t make obvious jokes and instead treats the whole enterprise with dignity and respect. There are moments where disbelief is a little hard to suspend (really, Ben seems to have an almost God-like acuity that just about everybody else in the company lacks). But again, that’s one of the perks of age: being able to see things that others are too busy or preoccupied — or just too young — to fully appreciate. The Intern practically makes growing old seem like a perk we can all look forward to.