This will be a short review, since The Interview has already taken more internet space than it deserves. James Franco and Seth Rogen team up again after creating two successful movies: last year’s This Is The End, and Pineapple Express (2008). It’s safe to say that The Interview is an unsubtle, painful and shallow attempt at satirical comedy – a collapsed self-parody.
James Franco plays a talk show host, Dave Skylark, who presents a celebrity gossip show priding itself on revealing the insipid secrets of the Hollywood elite, including revealing Nicki Minaj’s vagina, and televising Eminem coming out as gay. Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen) plays the producer of the show. After getting dissed by his former classmate at a party celebrating his production’s 1000th episode, Aaron wants to do something serious with the show and ends up scoring a television interview with the supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The pair get approached by Agent Lacey of CIA, and the film tells of how they are “honey-potted”, or emotionally manipulated, into assassinating, or “taking out”, Kim Jong-un.
The Interview is a failed attempt at political satire, if that’s indeed what it is trying to do. Instead of punishing North Korea or Kim Jong-un, it ends up punishing the audience. We won’t cast it aside as a complete mess, though: it does have some redeeming moments. Eminem and Katy Perry have somehow saved the movie, even though Katy Perry doesn’t make an appearance. Sadly, the movie is made all the more cringe-inducing by James Franco, who over acts to the point of forcing the audience to lose complete sympathy for his character. Above all, it might be worth paying money to see Randall Park as Kim Jong-Un crying and shitting his pants, before getting blown away by a tank.
If you have some free time to kill in the New Year, I would tentatively advise watching, but don’t expect too much depth from this toilet humour comedy.
