Review: The Interview

The Interview runs 112 minutes; most of it is unfunny. There is simply no way the film merits that much of the viewer's time.

Yet let's take a moment to give credit where credit is due. Its root concept is ballsy, there's no getting around it. The Interview is a ringing endorsement for the humiliation and assassination of a currently seated world leader. This is no wish fulfillment fantasy like Homeland or 24 where the big bads are thinly veiled fictions. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds may have offed Hitler but that dictator has long been dead and prodigiously pilloried. Even during Hitler's lifetime when Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator satirised his politics, the character was named Adenoid Hynkel. Seth Rogen and his collaborators Dan Sterling and Evan Goldberg unashamedly name North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and proceed to dismantle his self-mythologising with a barrage of laughs. The problem is, unlike The Great Dictator or other films of its ilk (To Be Or Not To Be, The Producers, Dr. Strangelove), The Interview is neither very funny nor particularly stinging in its rebuke of its target.

Rogen plays Aaron Rapaport, the producer of the highly rated talk show Skylar Tonight hosted by the overly puppyish Dave Skylar (James Franco). This is the type of show where Eminem might casually let drop that he's gay, Rob Lowe confess to his longtime baldness, Miley Cyrus's camel toe is discussed, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's adorableness is challenged by half a dozen puppies. Aaron wants something more than giving the people what they want, he yearns to report the real news, the serious stuff. He's in luck: it seems Kim Jong-un is such a fan of the show that he agrees to sit down for an exclusive, strictly controlled interview with Dave. Aaron, with his journalism school background, has reservations: "We're essentially letting him interview himself with your mouth."

Before they set off for North Korea, they're visited by CIA agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan). North Korea's recently launched a test missile, establishing them as a clear and present danger to the U.S.A. Since Dave and Aaron are going to be in the neighbourhood, maybe they could do the CIA a favour and kill the Supreme Leader?

The Interview has its fair share of characteristically lowbrow jokes ranging from guacamole-scented penises to anal penetration. Kim himself is presented as a lovable frat boy with a penchant for margaritas and Katy Perry songs while also shouldering a load of daddy and masculinity issues. The dictator bonds with the TV presenter, so much so that Dave doesn't even want to go through with the assassination. As media manipulation on both sides is the other main theme of the film, it might have been more subversive if Kim was an actual nice guy painted in a negative light by the Western media. Kim gets in some valid points when the actual interview finally takes place, but any attempts to have a halfway decent exchange of opinions or even a sense of betrayal is continually undercut by the inexplicably gory antics in the control room.

That distractive quality is what makes the film so frustrating to sit through. It's akin to attending a circus for the main act only to have the clowns detract your attention to the stupidities of the peripheral acts. The jokes suffer, the concept suffers and, most of all, the audience suffers.

The Interview

Directed by: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen

Written by: Dan Sterling

Starring: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Lizzy Caplan, Randall Park, Diana Bang, Timothy Simons