Review: Nancy Myers' 'The Intern' Starring Robert De Niro And Anne Hathaway

Nancy Myers’ cinema of affluent pleasantness continues unabated with “The Intern,” a pillowy trifle about nice, well-off people overcoming, well, nothing much really, all in order to continue being happy and successful. Rarely has a Hollywood movie delivered less drama than Myers’ latest, which is so free of complications or conflict that it barely has reason to exist, except as a fawning showcase for beautiful modern office spaces, immense men’s walk-in closets (replete with automated tie racks!), and enormous Pottery Barn-style kitchens where cherubic tykes say adorable things to likable upper-class parents – and, in this instance, to their wonderful new surrogate grandfather, who appears like a gift from on-high to solve whatever mini-crisis they might be facing.

That divine visitor is Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro), a widowed 70-year-old who comes to realize that retirement – after forty years spent as a big shot at a phone book manufacturer – doesn’t suit him. Despite taking...