Stories of Robert De Niro baling out of an innocuous Radio Times interview (he complained about the “negative inference” of Emma Brockes’s questions) suggested that the one-time screen great’s latest vehicle is an embarrassment-causing stinker. Actually, Nancy Meyers’s humdrum dramedy is nothing to get upset about. De Niro plays Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old widower who lands a late-life internship at an e-commerce company run by Anne Hathaway’s harassed but successful Jules Ostin. So basically it’s The Devil Wears Prada: Next Generation – The Nicer Years. Ben is full of old-school wisdom (“always carry a handkerchief”) and soon becomes Jules’s confidant as a work/life crisis beckons and marital discord looms. Meyers’s screenplay makes all the right equal-ops noises as Jules faces sexist stereotyping from friends and colleagues alike, while Ben proves himself an unexpected feminist flag-waver. A shame, then, that Rene Russo should be reduced to providing Carry On-style light relief as the office masseuse in a role that was presumably savagely reduced in the editing.
