Intern Review

• 19th Aug 2011

Intern, quite simply, is a very low budget film about high end fashion. Set in the fictional offices of Skirt magazine we follow the attempts of irritating intern Jocelyn Bennett (Dominique Swain, Lolita) to rise from lowly intern to fashion editor. Jocelyn eats, sleeps and breaths fashion and it’s her dream to rise through the ranks of her beloved Skirt. But someone is taking Skirt’s fabulous ideas (“wheelchair chic”) and sending them over to arch rivals Vogue. Seeing an opportunity Jocelyn makes it her mission to expose the spy, save Skirt and hopefully bag herself a promotion. All whilst trying to win the heart of Paul (Ben Pullen, An Ideal Husband), the only straight man in the office, which is made all the more difficult due to the fact he is dating Resin (Leilani Bishop, a genuine model who has not appeared in anything other than Intern) the evil catwalk queen.

The quality of Intern is appalling, it looks cheap and the sound is so bad that it’s often hard to understand what the characters are saying. Even the shot of the cover on IMDB is blurry. If you are going to make a film about the glossy, stylish world of a high fashion magazine your film needs to look stylish and glossy like the pages of a high fashion magazine, not cheap and tacky like a low-rent catalogue. Despite having a low budget this film has some big fashion name cameos such as Diane von Fürstenberg, Tommy Hilfiger and the always fabulous André Leon Talley. There is also an inexplicable cameo from Gywneth Paltrow. Because the film is so cheap and awful these cameos are all the more bizarre.

The acting isn’t brilliant. I was excited to see that Kathy Griffin and Joan Rivers were part of the cast, as fashion bitches Cornelia Crisp and Dolly Bellows respectively, as they are funny women and Joan Rivers has been mixing fashion and acidic comedy for years. Yet they both fall flat in this film. Swain, a once promising actress who set the screen alight in Lolita, is dull and irksome. The rest of the cast and their characters are instantly forgettable. But the biggest sin is committed by the costume department; if your film is about fashionistas then you need to dress your cast in fabulous clothes! Someone really should have called in Patricia Fields.

The problem with Intern, aside from the fact it’s badly made and boring, is that it feels like it’s all been done before and done better. This film was made in 2000 so it precedes The Devil Wears Prada, Ugly Betty, Zoolander and the stunningly brilliant September Issue and yet it feels tired and irrelevant. The screenwriters of Intern both worked at fashion magazines and all the anecdotes are based on real, overheard conversations, so clearly the potential to make a waspish, witty film about fashion was there, when it comes to making satire the fashion industry is a gift that keeps on giving. Maybe a better cast and a bigger budget would have lifted it, but it is what it is and unfortunately that is a poor, third-rate film about fashion that’s heavy handed with the stereotypes and stingy with the humor. As André Leon Tally might say, this film is the epitome of drekitude (for those who don’t know what this means, it ain’t good)!

Lindsay Emerson