So ever since the production of this movie there were a lot of global controversies haphazardly going about, especially against our long time rivals: you guessed it! The Koreans (North to be exact, the Southerners love us!…for the most part). Of course, as a Korean, if I saw a movie trailer with the basic synopsis that they were going to kill my lord, savior, and GOD Kim Jong-un I don’t think I would be too pleased about the idea either. So as the totalitarian that Kim Jong-un is, his retaliation involved sending death threats to President Obama and the citizens of America by basically stating that he was going to destroy any theater that was releasing the movie if we didn’t cancel the release. As the pompous American government that we are we kind of just laughed about it said, “Well screw you! We’re going to release it regardless!” Online that is. Oh Americans, the sly ideologies that we’ve had since the game of settlers and Indians has not really changed at all from the stretch of things. Like c’mon, with the anticipation the movie was having did you REALLY think we were going to cancel the release? As a revenue-hungry country, I already knew that we weren’t going to cancel it. That’d be asinine on our part despite the precautions from an angry Communist country right? Well it kind of came back to haunt us when the Koreans assembled a team of hackers and hacked Sony, the company that was responsible for essentially distributing it on demand. Not only did it surprise the stereotypical Americans that are not “globally aware”, it pissed off a lot of gamers when they were trying to figure out why their Playstation Network wasn’t working on their current-gen console the Playstation 4. Why some people were surprised is beyond me, but I’m still trying to figure out how we didn’t learn from the Chinese hacking into the Playstation Network a few years back during the Playstation 3 era. A few “Kanye shrugs” later and we still don’t know, but hey, I just hope we’re prepared for when Kim Jong-un releases his cyber-army of 6000 hackers ready to unleash a technological hell on the United States. I’m sure Obama will solve it by spanking them with a few more sanctions because that seems to be solving things lately.
Before we drift too far away from the actual review and I go on an international affairs rant, let’s talk about the actual movie shall we?
The Interview is about a late night talk show host Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his best friend/producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) trying to establish themselves as being one of the best talk shows on television with the tabloid based “Skylark Tonight”. As the show gradually starts to get some buzz, they’ve later figured out that the Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a huge fan of the show. To accomplish their goal of eventually becoming journalists, Skylark and Rapoport felt like this could be their big break, but of course what good is a movie without a catch right? Once the deal was finalized that they were going to interview the supreme leader, the CIA felt like this was the perfect opportunity to put two innocent American’s lives on the line to take the North Korean Leader out.
Since Seth Rogen was one of the main directors, you’ll see that the movie has his quirkiness as well as some slight satire from his past movies that he’s been in (if you catch them pat yourself on the back). I personally feel like it has a mixture between Family Guy and South Park as Franco’s character is more of the oblivious airhead while Rogen’s character is the one that sets Skylark straight and keeps him informed about himself as well as the dynamics of certain situations; kind of like what Brian does with Peter in just about every episode of Family Guy. The South Park references start to come in as soon you see Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) and his flamboyant, eccentric attitude overshadowing his brutally stern and psychotic-like personality that’s perceived in real life. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all. Maybe he’s just misunderstood..right?…right?..no?..okay. Nonetheless, it’s still comical just picturing the idea of the Korean leader walking around with margaritas and blasting Katy Perry in his tank while shooting at his own resources with missiles.
Overall, I personally feel like while there were some punch lines here and there the jokes did start to get a little redundant to some degree. I’ve had the mindset that based off the trailer that this movie was either going to be really good…or really bad so your expectations might be shaky until you actually see the film. Based off other reviews that I’ve read, I don’t really understand what people were looking for exactly saying things like, “The Koreans had good taste trying to stop this movie” or “It’s a waste of time and money”, etc. when I knew from the jump this wasn’t no movie of the year type quality. To be honest, I think that was the whole point. Rogen wasn’t trying to direct it as a film like Argo or The Wolf of Wall Street, but to express himself in a film where he can poke fun at the political world, as well as correlate it with his comical style. If you go watch the movie with a clear mind with no type of expectations then it’ll be a good movie to pass the time with when you’re chilling with a bunch a friends looking for a new flick to watch. In conclusion, I wouldn’t say this movie is a waste of time if you enjoy the international relations aspects get punned at a few times throughout the movie.
Score: 7/10
Other Scores:
Rotten Tomato: 51%
Metacritic: 52%
IMBD: 7.3/10
The Murgin Soul 