Review: The Interview

James Franco stars as an idiot egotist trashy TV interviewer/host named Dave Skylark (think Matthew Lillard doing Ryan Seacrest as the host of a Larry King type-show), who learns he has a fan in North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (Randall Park). He and his more sensible producer (Seth Rogen) are ecstatic when they land the interview of the century, but soon realise the gravity of the whole thing when the CIA (personified by a bemused Lizzy Caplan) come knocking, hoping to seize an assassination opportunity. Even then Skylark seems all gung-ho about it, that is until he meets a disarmingly sweet and cool Kim Jong-un, who loves margaritas and Katy Perry. Diana Bang plays the pretty North Korean woman given the task of handling Skylark and his producer, the latter of whom sparks seem to fly with!

 

Here it is, the film at the centre of the Sony hacking scandal. The film that was potentially never going to be released. Frankly, this 2014 comedy from co-director pairing Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (the writing duo behind the enjoyable “Superbad”) isn’t worth the hype, scorn, or…well, it’s not worth much of anything. It pretty much sucks, but even on that level it’s not especially memorably bad. It’s just a really dumb and really lame film not terribly worth talking about at great length.

 

I won’t deny I chuckled a few times, but for the most part this one’s a bit of a snoozer. The opening scene is an example: A cute little North Korean girl singing a song about wishing bad things for America in a sweet voice….Yawn. It’s “South Park”-style humour, except “South Park” was (at least until Isaac Hayes left and it went downhill) frequently uproariously funny, and actually occasionally very clever. This film goes to all of the obvious places, plus lots of scatological humour thrown in for no good measure. It’s your typical militantly non-PC comedy, and whilst I’m not the biggest PC guy (i.e. I believe it’s a good thing, but also believe it gets taken too far sometimes), I think I probably hate the anti-PC brigade even more. I mean, outside of “South Park” and Billy Connolly, I don’t tend to find such flagrantly non-PC style comedy all that uproarious, usually because there’s nothing else going on. Just breaking taboos for the sake of it and expecting this alone to be funny. It very rarely is. With “South Park” there was always a point to it, with Billy Connolly, it’s always part of a story that is being told. So this is just your typical non-PC Rogen/Franco collaboration full of dick and pussy jokes and a few lame political pot-shots. There’s an audience for this film, but I’m not it.

 

To be honest, I tend to prefer Seth Rogen and James Franco separately rather than together, and this film does nothing to change my mind on that. Franco is quite simply miscast and painfully unfunny. Although he is one of the worst and most random choosers of projects, the Oscar-nominated actor has very obvious talent. Solely in dramas, however. The guy just isn’t a comedic actor at all, and playing a smarmy, ego-driven TV interviewer in a supposed comedy just isn’t in his wheelhouse whatsoever. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Franco’s role should’ve gone to Ashton Kutcher. That’s how bad Franco is. He’s awful. Just look at his Gollum impersonation. It’s terrible. In fact, for all of the “Lord of the Rings” references throughout the film, I don’t think Franco, Rogen, or Goldberg are actually fans at all. Sure, Kutcher’s not terribly funny, either, but at least I’m pretty confident that ‘douchebag TV interviewer’ is in Kutcher’s very small wheelhouse. The only time in the whole film Franco made me laugh was his rant about missing the ‘money shot’, which is pretty terrific. As for Rogen, he’s more palatable, and slightly funnier than Franco, but rather boring to be honest. He seems somewhat neutered. You really know you’re in trouble when Eminem gets the biggest giggles in the film. He parodies his reputation for being homophobic and it’s genuinely amusing as he (seemingly subliminally) appears to ‘come out’ on TV. Hell, even Rogen gets a good line exclaiming ‘Eminem’s gay on our show!’. It was a nice surprise in a film full of obvious and unfunny gags. In fact, I liked that it was ‘gay humour’ without actually being homophobic, a tricky balance that I think the film narrowly succeeds in navigating. Lizzy Caplan’s got ‘something’, but it’s not the ability to choose good scripts. She’s given so little to work with here, but her obvious charisma shines through nonetheless. Randall Park doesn’t look remotely like Kim Jong-un, and isn’t the slightest bit funny, either (“Team America: World Police”, from the “South Park” guys, was much funnier in lampooning his kooky dad in marionette form), though Diana Bang sure is a cutie I’d like to see in more films. Preferably decent ones. She’s a real find, I think (Diana Bang is an awesome name for a Bond girl, too if you ask me).

 

This is so boring and badly done on the whole that I couldn’t even be bothered getting outraged by it. I won’t deny that there are a few chortles throughout, but only a few, and only chortles. This wouldn’t start WWIII so much as bore people to death. The most memorable thing are a couple of really cool musical choices, such as Isaac Hayes’ excellent cover of ‘Walk on By’ and the amusing usage of Scorpion’s whistle-tastic ‘Winds of Change’ (possibly the funniest moment in the film). Love that song, cheesy or not.

 

It isn’t as bad as “Your Highness” or “This Is the End” (the latter being the previous directorial effort from Rogen and Goldberg), but it’s not much better, either. It sure as shit ain’t “The Great Dictator” (or “Spies Like Us”, for that matter). It’s so boring, lazy, and doesn’t remotely deserve any of the attention or press (good or bad) it received. If it weren’t for the whole Sony scandal, this would be instantly forgettable. Fuck it, it’s not even getting into my Bottom 10 of the year, either. It’s not worthy of such distinction. The screenplay is by Dan Sterling (interestingly, a former writer for “South Park”, as well as producer of the US version of “The Office”), from a story by Sterling, Rogen, and Goldberg.

 

Rating: D+