The Interview

The most common reaction by moviegoers who opted to see the Seth Rogen-James Franco brah-comedy The Interview in the name of freedom of speech or in an effort to prevent the cyber-terrorists from winning or any other reason nobler than the desire to laugh at some dumb stuff is "All that for this?"

That's not to say that The Interview is awful, as some have claimed, or that people who tend to enjoy the (purposefully) half-baked (pun intended) humor of Rogen and Franco would not be amused by this trifling little movie. I rate it a tad below Pineapple Express while the other film critic in my family thinks it's a little better. I think it had a real chance to be genuinely subversive but the filmmakers lacked the nerve to actually alienate Team America; one can hardly blame them for hedging their commercial bets. They are savvy fools, not diplomats or philosophizers, and they were trying to make a funny movie that turned a more than modest profit.

Anyway, it's impossible to say what would have happened had The Interview simply been released as originally planned, absent the hacking of Sony Pictures and the sword-rattling of the Guardians of Peace and the widely held assumption that North Korea had sanctioned the cyber first strike because its government was upset over the way its maximum leader was portrayed in the film. If Sony hadn't pulled the film from distribution, then allowed a limited release in some 300 independent theaters on Christmas Day (and undercut those theater owners by making the movie available online and on various on demand platforms on Christmas Eve), what would there be to say about it?

Well, I certainly wouldn't be writing a review to run a full nine days after the film became available. The truth is, I probably wouldn't have seen the film until it hit home video, presumably a couple of months down the line. I had assigned a review of The Interview for last Friday's MovieStyle, but then Sony pulled the movie and canceled the press screening. (I saw the movie Saturday afternoon, in a nearly full house, which is a qualitatively different experience from watching it at home. Comedies always play better in a crowd.)

Dan Lybarger, the critic to whom I'd assigned the film originally, saw it on his own dime last weekend too. He wasn't impressed. He told me in an email:

"Having witnessed the film on my computer, I would have to say the hackers and the North Koreans gave the film a legitimacy for which it was not initially entitled. Like Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Team America: World Police, it comments on politics and human folly with vulgar jokes.

"Unlike its predecessors, The Interview isn't all that funny."

But I'm not sure I completely agree -- The Interview is funny, sometimes. It's also just jarringly and intentionally inconsistent. The tone swerves wildly between absurdist, faux Dadist non-sequitur and standard frat boy leering to a kind of Theater of Cringe that challenges the expectations and assumptions of the putative audience. Then it devolves into a boring action shootout and wraps the adventure up with a conventional Hollywood happy ending (in which even lopped-off body parts can be miraculously restored).

It's far from good, but it's not that far from good either. What's most aggravating about it is that its problems seem to stem not from an insufficiency of talent or failure of imagination but a calculated raking-back of ambition. Turns out, The Interview isn't a political satire at all -- it's not even the Larry Charles-Sasha Baron Cohen collaboration The Dictator, much less Chaplin's The Great Dictator. It's a stupid comedy made by smart people, and while there's certainly a place for such movies, the breaking-in of real-life issues makes this one feel irresponsible. Setting the movie in the real-life dystopia of North Korea doesn't feel exciting and brave; it feels desperately sensational.

At the very least, Rogen and Evan Goldberg were courting controversy by setting the film in North Korea. Unless you believe that there was a publicity-stunt element to Sony's handling of the picture's release (not inconceivable, although it was probably prudent to pull the picture at least until the threat could be assessed), you have to wonder if in the end it was worth the headaches the studio endured and whether this so-called victory for free speech might be Pyrrhic. Right now, we don't know whether the cyber attacks on Sony Pictures were actually occasioned by the impending release of The Interview or not -- it might have been the work of a disgruntled employee and The Interview might have provided convenient cover -- but I can't see how the last few weeks could serve to embolden Hollywood to take a stand against any rogue regime that can access a modem.

Anyway, onto the film: Franco is vapid celebrity interviewer Dave Skylark, while Rogen is his producer, Aaron, a serious journalist who wishes he could be part of Aaron Sorkin's Newsroom. Because he has infantile tastes, North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un is a big fan of Skylark's, which leads to an opportunity to interview the maximum leader in Pyongyang. Before they depart, the CIA, in the personage of a "honeypot" agent (Lizzie Caplan), suborns them into a dubious plot to assassinate Kim.

It should be said that the comedy is hit-and-miss throughout the first act, and that Franco walks a fine line between entertainingly obnoxious and just plain obnoxious. His wardrobe is wonderfully obscene and he has an undeniable chemistry with Rogen that sometimes makes the movie feel like an extended practical joke one of them is pulling on the other.

But the best part of the film comes after their arrival in North Korea, as empty-headed Skylark bonds with lonely boy Kim (a surprisingly empathetic performance by Randall Park, who is by far the best thing in the movie) over short goal basketball, Katy Perry anthems and deep-seated daddy issues. Maybe we don't need to kill this dictator after all; maybe all he really needs is a hug.

But the movie isn't really going there because how could it? We have the moral equivalent of Hitler here. Rogen and his directing-writing partner Goldberg aren't about to be subversive enough to grant him more than token humanity. They almost hint at a congruency between America's celebrity mongering and Kim's infatuation with Skylark, but they're really not interested in exploring the collateral issues that the movie can't help but stir up. They need to hurry up and get to the next sex joke.

This isn't a horrible offense, but it is disappointing given that the creative juices behind The Interview likely understood exactly what sort of moral issues they were punting on. I don't think they should have played around with a mad person in charge of an unstable state, but once they cracked open that particular can, they could have at least eaten some of the juicier worms.

As it is, The Interview is just a movie. Not a bad one, though it certainly isn't to everyone's taste. But it's hardly a brave one either.

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MovieStyle on 01/02/2015