If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic. "Hi."
Before I start the review, there is important political backstory that I should tell. One day, probably next year, we will forget the reason why this kind of blew up. So in order to fully understand this review years from now, here's the back ground. In 2014, Seth Rogen and James Franco stared in a movie where they play entertainment journalists that some how end up scheduled to interview the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un. As a Seth Rogen movie, one will expect him to make fun of the characters in the movie. Well North Korea presumably got a hold of a copy of it in the 2014 Sony hack and North Korea threatened to bomb any movie theater that premiered it Christmas Day 2014. Because of the threat, many major theaters decided that they weren't going to show it, which ultimately lead to Sony pulling theater distribution all together. Now when it first surfaced, most people thought, "well it's just another stupid Seth Rogen movie that I won't see." However, after North Korea made threats and one couldn't watch it, well the Streisand effect took over. The Streisand effect is the phenomenon of something becoming well known because someone wants to censor it. This first happened with a photo of Barbra Streisand's house being part of a scenic cliff photo. This was published on the internet back in the 90s and only a couple people knew about it. However, Barbra found out about it and demanded that it be taken down. Because of that demand, the news media covered it and millions of people found out and viewed that photo. What was a movie that only a select group of people would want to go see in theaters and maybe making money from TV and online distribution through Crackle, became a movie that everyone wanted to see, simply because they want to see what got North Korea all worked up. Because of overwhelming demand, Sony then found online distribution though services like Vudu, and youtube rental, and amazon instant video. Well, the Streisand effect hit me. A movie I would eventually watch for free on Crackle, I decided to get through amazon instant video, if only to stick it to North Korea. So, what is The Interview like?
Warning, this is going to be full of spoilers. I found out about the ending through news coverage. I'm assuming you did as well. Additionally, Rogen movies aren't the most creative and it's pretty easy to know what will happen. Anyways, here it goes.
I'll start with the story. Simply put, James Franco is an entertainment reporter that has a show similar to entertainment tonight where he interviews celebrities. Seth Rogen is kind of his agent, I think. He's there for everything James does. James starts out the movie by interviewing Eminem, and Eminem publicly comes out as gay during the interview. This was their 1000th episode, with a crazy after party. During the party, James has a bit of a "no one will ever take me seriously" thing. Well as it turns out Kim Jong-Un is a fan of the show and wants to do an interview with them. So they are going to be the first international people to interview Un. This gets found out by everyone, and other media personalities make fun of James for it. Bill Maher makes an appearance as one of those personalities. Well then the CIA approaches them and says that they want the pair to assassinate Un using this discrete ricin through skin contact in a hand shake thing. Well in North Korea, it turns out to be a pretty cool place. Food is plentiful, all that we thought was terrible is fake. Un is actually a really relatable guy to James. James and Un become good friends, and it becomes hard for James to kill Un. Seth is angry at James because James is becoming friends with Un, and doesn't want to kill Un. Well, James quickly changes his mind about his new BFF when he finds out that the food store was fake, and Un is a terrible guy. However, through a bunch of turn of events, they lose all the ricin strips. They get some help from the inside and decide they are going to embarrass Un because killing him won't do anything because one of his brothers will just replace him, and the only way to truly change things is to make the people see that he's human and not a god. So they end up embarrassing him during the interview by Un and James sharing a moment where Un shows his vulnerability. A whole bunch of crazy fighting ensues and Un dies. After making it back to the US, North Korea becomes a democracy, and the movie ends.
So what about the characters? Well we have 3 main characters and 2 supporting female leads. The 3 main characters are Seth, James, and Un. Seth and James are pretty typical characters. James is the goofy one that's stupid, and Seth is the smart-ish friend that acts as the voice of reason and gets dragged along and gets into dumb situations because of him. Now I have to say that this is very different from my experiences with Seth. In the movies I've seen, Seth is always the dumb one. Even if he's smart-ish, he's not the voice of reason. This was interesting. Now Un is a very interesting villain. For most of the movie, he seems like not a bad guy. He seems like he is actually decent and we've been wrong about him. However, after a while, we find out he really is crazy and a bad guy. He's actually slightly competent, at least as a dictator. Then there's the 2 supporting female leads. They serve as sort of love interests. The one is the CIA lady that recruits them and the other is the military lady in North Korea that ends up being on the inside and helps them out later. The CIA lady is Jame's love interest and really only exists for jokes and exposition as to why certain things happen to James and Seth. However, the military lady actually ends up being rather important. She ends up being Seth's love interest, and unlike the CIA lady, Seth and her's relationship ends up developing. Since she is actually there when things go down, her character has a little more reason for existing as she is. The CIA lady could have easily been a man and story progression and character development would have been the same. However, military lady actually feels like there is a reason she's a woman and a love interest. It's hard to pin-point but it's there. These are the main 5, the others are all secondary characters that don't really serve a purpose other than to be gags or to add to the suspension of disbelief.
Now what of the humor? I'll make it easy, it's R-rated Seth Rogan. There's a lot of toilet humor, swearing shock factor humor, and stupid humor. It's not high class humor. It's not going to win any Oscars. However, it's OK. The James Franco humor isn't very good. However, Seth does a decent job at the humor. The thing where he has to stick a small cylinder package up his butt to keep it from the North Koreans, and how he handles the subsequent strip search. Then there's the Un humor. Oh, that is good. The portrayal of this legitimately terrible person as this cool, easy going and misunderstood guy and the ultimate crazy is quite funny. Like every scene that Un is in he steals the show. It's a little like Ronery from Team America and how Il was portrayed there. There's some actual smart political commentary buried in the Un character and his humor after you peal away the surface humor. It's a tad like South Park just not as well done. There's not much else to say humor wise since all the humor is derived from these 3 characters.
Before I get to the verdict, I have to address the whole North Korea controversy. As and American, I think it's a tad ridiculous how they reacted to it, especially how I see 'Merica jokes every day. I'm sure North Koreans have pretty crazy representations of Americans. Now one thing I noticed is that it would be pretty easy to make a "safe for North Korea" edit because they do paint a very rosy picture of North Korea and Kim Jong-Un for half the movie. With some creative edits, Kim could have a Pro-North Korea, anti-American movie on it's hands. After seeing how Star Wars the Phantom Menace could be changed from a fan edit, it would be easy for North Korea to edit The Interview into a wholesome "North Korea is awesome" movie. Don't get me wrong, this is a pro-America, anti-Kim Jong-Un movie with it's intended edit, but could be edited to be pro-Kim Jong-Un and anti-America.
OK, one more thing before the verdict, I promise. With all the publicity that this movie got after the hack and the removal from theaters, it became really high demand. Some conspiracy theorists theorize that this was a marketing ploy by Sony; make another Seth Rogen film that will probably perform poorly, make it about North Korea, get hacked and have it get pulled from theaters before it premiers, and use the controversy to stir up demand for an online release. However, one has to consider what happened leading up to it. The hack consisted of loads of personal information like personal addresses, social security numbers, private phone numbers, private emails, etc. of many employees and actors and movies and other projects that were in the works, which is how many speculate that North Korea got it's hands on The Interview before it premiered. That is a lot of sensitive information to release just to drum up demand for a mediocre film. With that perspective, it's easy to see that this was a legitimate attack.
Now for the verdict. Well, it's a Seth Rogen movie. It's not ground breaking humor, and is pretty hit and miss, with a small majority of miss. Like I'll say it's 45% hit and 55% miss. Then again, I like some well done stupid humor. It's also pretty crude. Mostly well done crude, but crude none the less. With this in mind, it is interesting to see what North Korea doesn't want you to see. The Streisand effect is strong with this movie. It's worth renting. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Oh yeah, here's a little photo from a promotional thing before it got pulled. Get your picture with Supreme Leader.
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