A hilarious farce in the same vein as This is the End, the Interview is not a hard hitting political take down but rather a fun broad comedy that occasionally flirts with deeper substance and insight but is  mostly more about putting things in Seth Rogen’s butt.

After a run in with an old college mate (Anders Holm), talk show director Aaron Rappaport (Seth Rogen) pushes his best friend and host of the show Dave Skylark (James Franco) to do harder hitting interviews than the goat that Matthew McConaughey allegedly fucked. As tensions rise with North Korea, Skylark finds that Kim Jong-un is a big fan of the talk show so Rapport reaches out to North Korea to see if they can land an interview. To his surprise, North Korea responds and sets up an interview with their leader on the condition that the only questions that can be asked are those supplied by the North Koreans themselves. Skylark finds himself mocked as a joke and toady by the media just as Rapport feels like he has been wasting his life on a meaningless show. Enter the CIA who want the pair to assassinate the leader during the visit. And wackiness ensues.

Unfortunately it is pretty much impossible to review this film without mentioning the controversy surrounding it. In case you somehow missed all this, a hacker group which may or may not be connected to North Korea perpetrated a  massive corporate hack on Sony and then subsequently threatened  9/11 style terrorist attacks on theaters that show the film which led to major movie chains dropping the film from release which then led to Sony cancelling the release altogether. The hacker group responsible, the Guardians of Peace (GOP) were smug, President Obama called Sony out for making a mistake and essentially bowing to terrorism and Sony decided to release the film on VOD and in a small number of independent theaters, including the Loft Cinema in Tucson, AZ which is where I saw the film.

This controversy has put a massive spotlight on the Interview and altered the expectations of audiences while also making the viewing of it an act of patriotism for some Americans. I think this is a bit unfair because the movie, while inflammatory, is not some kind of deep political satire set up to inform or propagandize but is rather the sort of thing that we get from co-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.  I happen to love their material and as such the Interview was right up my alley but if your expectations are for something more significant and deep you are going to be pretty horrified by what you see. Also if your sensibilities do not run toward scatological humor and vulgarity then you are setting yourself up for disappointment and misguided outrage.

As a film, the Interview essentially does for Frost/Nixon what This is the End did for Apocalypse movies. This is not a serious look at politics and international relations but rather a look at what would happen if you took two guys from the entertainment industry and threw them into a politically charged situation for which they are completely unprepared. Often the comedy here is about how incompetent and self-absorbed they are while lampooning western culture with a very liberal dose of dick and fart jokes. It is hard to really review comedy since you either think a thing is funny or not so there is really no point trying to talk something in to being funny but if your taste runs to the silly and absurd side with a liberal helping of vulgarity then you have come to the right place.

One thing that I was surprised by in the Interview is how even handed it was. There are certain conclusions drawn that one would suspect from this kind of a movie but on the whole it went farther in finding sympathy for the North Koreans than I thought it would particularly when it comes to how having a batshit crazy regime running a country and looking at the effects of that. I am sure there are those who wish that it went farther in that direction but that is not really the point of the movie and I am happy they touched on it at all.

The movie is also surprisingly violent and bloody which sounds like a weird thing to say about a movie in which a central plot point includes an assassination but there it is. The violence seems fairly well earned by the time you get to it and even at its most extreme, the violence is still pretty funny.

A great deal of the success of this kind of movie is dependent on the performances. The premise is pretty dark and there are some real issues at play here so if the performances read false then the whole thing falls apart. The Interview is in good hands here as James Franco and Seth Rogen are both extremely on point here and carry the weight of the movie on their shoulders. If you can’t like them and root for them then you aren’t going to put up with most of this movie. Franco in particular shines as a kind of dopey talk show host who is easily led but at the same time sharp in a way you wouldn’t really expect. Rogen plays the world weary director with the right dose of earnestness, pathos and silliness without turning into a straight man cipher. Lizzy Caplan is terrific as Agent Lacey who recruits the guys into the plot and may be honeypotting Skylark into agreeing to the mission. She gets the performance just right and while she feels a bit underused, she elevates every scene she is in.

Randall Park is probably the most important cog of this machine as Kim Jong-un. It would be easy to play the real-life dictator as a buffoon or an evil bastard but Park straddles the line on those two extremes with deft skill. This is a role that could easily become caricature but Park brings in some humanity and depth to the role that brings out the basic humanity to the character while handling the darker tones with just as much skill. The argument is never really that Kim Jong-un is a good guy but it certainly does have a take on why he might be that guy without letting him off the hook for  being an megalomaniacal piece of crazy shit. This is an impressive feat and Park does it flawlessly.

Conclusion [9 out of 10]

The Interview is in a weird spot with the attention of people who wouldn’t normally see this kind of movie and the expectations that come from a country proclaiming that its existence is an act of war. The Interview does not live up to those lofty expectations but it doesn’t try to and was never meant to. It does exactly what it set out to which is to be a really funny comedy that sends up political espionage films. It is more Spies Like Us than a Wag the Dog or even Dr Strangelove but that is what it is intended to be. If you have dug Rogen and Goldberg’s previous films then you will be right at home here. If you are looking for biting political satire or a serious examination of North Korea then you should look elsewhere. For me, it is one of the funniest comedies of the year.