"Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have had a long running bromance"

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have had a long running bromance since the surprise smash hit Wedding Crashers and have been praised for their on screen charisma especially together. Eight years later they team up to have their middle age employment dreams fulfilled by Google but have is their brand of nice guy comedy extinct just like their characters?

Billy McMahon (Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Wilson) are in a bind as their laid off from their salesmen positions as the company goes out of business. Their boss (played by the woefully underrated John Goodman) explains to them that everything is digital now, nobody wants a salesman and in 2013 they’re basically obsolete. We then cut to a classic quick plot device scene where Billy’s girlfriend leaves him because he was no job even though she loves him deeply. We’re informed that he’s always screws things up in life, judging by his lovely home and the stable job he just lost I’m guessing that’s the end of that plot development. Oh and don’t worry about the girlfriend, she’s never seen again.

So Billy and Nick end up at Google for an internship, that’s literally the end of that story arc and considering this film is a hefty 120 minutes it's no wonder they had to cut some of the boring ‘plot’ to make way for lots of panning shots of Google headquarters. Nick and Billy find themselves woefully under qualified for the tasks that Google has set for them and end up with a band of quirky but bright misfits. Hijinks are had, Harry Potter and Cosplay is mentioned because to be smart you also have to be a pop culture nerd as well. Billy and Nick try to involve themselves but find that they are coming up short in the brains department so try to involve some of their sales technique by talking around problems.

The issue with the film is that it relies too heavily on the two senior actors and their complete charm and charisma. Whilst Vince Vaughn could talk for England and is slightly manic and surreal and Owen Wilson is the lovable chilled out guy who everyone wants to see succeed, it gets old, very fast. The cast is what lets them down, the main villain Graham (Max Minghella) is far too terrifying and isn’t particularly funny comparatively with Wedding Crashers bad guy Bradley Cooper. The head of the internship course Mr. Chetty (Aasif Mandvi) starts off as a hard ass that wants to chuck them out of the program but softens almost immediately, apparently Google wasn’t too happy with the idea that their company is run by bullies.  Vaughn and Wilson struggle to carry the cast and their ‘follow your dream’ starry-eyed wisdom soon becomes tiresome. Google may have got a huge amount of publicity out of this movie but it’s clear that even if Google intervened in some places this film was always going to be ‘do not search’ in Vaughn’s and Wilson’s careers.