Movie Review: The Interview
Blog post originally published at newsradio1620.com, December 2014
“You know what’s more destructive than a nuclear bomb? Words.”
Let me get this out right at the top: “The Interview” is not great. It's not going to shake you to your core and it's not going to be remembered decades from now–not for its content, anyway.
But it is pretty good.
After all the trouble this movie caused before it was even released, it's easy to inadvertently hold it to a higher standard than your typical goofball comedy. They had a lot of potential to more deeply explore elements of propaganda, media manipulation, celebrity culture, geopolitics, etc, but that can get pretty heady and can very easily drag a comedy down. The writers of “The Interview” came up with a reasonably-plausible situation and expanded on it with a funny result. It's really not their fault that some people got bent out of shape over it, but as it turns out, they seem to have had a very astute prediction of how North Korea would react to the film.
The storyline unfolds pretty easily–James Franco plays Dave Skylark, a not-so-bright celebrity news anchor (that is, an anchor who specializes in celebrity news) who's a savant at getting famous people to speak candidly on live TV. Seth Rogen is his producer, Aaron Rappaport, who basically drove Skylark to the top of the ratings but feels like he's squandering his journalistic potential. In the wake of successful long-range missile tests by North Korea, Skylark and Rappaport develop a plan to interview Kim Jong Un (played brilliantly by Randall Park), who is apparently a big fan of their show. They publicize the hell out of the upcoming interview, which is expected to be the biggest television event since the moon landing. Skylark and Rappaport are approached by the CIA with a plan to covertly assassinate Kim in order to prevent him from lighting up the American west coast with nukes. Of course, nothing is ever easy, and the plan hits several speed bumps–including Skylark becoming friends with Kim and not wanting to go through with the plan as a result.
One thematic area that “The Interview” develops better than I expected was the way it portrayed the Kim family's ability to manipulate their people by manipulating the media, and the importance of public image to a dictatorship. It's not a revelation by any means, but the response from probably-North Korea in real life just goes to show how seriously the administration in that country takes the image of their leader. It's a testament to the relative creativity of writer Dan Sterling and story developers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg that they use a repetitive, juvenile, toilet-humor gag about Kim’s bathroom habits (or lack thereof) to effectively illustrate how crucial Kim Jong Un's persona is to his power position.
There's a fairly interesting exploration of journalistic ethics in here as well. When the actual interview gets started, people around the world are watching, including a few real-life satirists and journalists. The event is set up within the film as a test of Skylark and Rappaport's integrity and skill–will they stick to the pre-scripted interview questions provided by Kim's handlers, thus giving him an international propaganda platform? Or will they use a unique opportunity to nail an unstable dictator with the hard-hitting questions he doesn't want to answer? The ramifications of their decision are well-established, and the stakes are actually pretty high.
I guess some people expect "smart" comedies to beat you over the head with heavy messages insulated with bitter laughs. Even if Kim Jong Un were a fictional person, this movie would be funny enough to warrant a watch–the fact that he's a real person just makes it better. Obviously it's exploitative, that was entirely the point. It gets cartoonish at times, but it's always relevant to the plot. Besides, cartoons are largely the spiritual predecessors of “The Interview”–back in the '40s, we had Bugs Bunny running circles around Hitler, and much more recently “South Park” pitted Eric Cartman against Osama Bin Laden. Puncturing the egos of big-time bad guys with flippant comedy is a long-standing American tradition…if it gets too serious, it veers into blatant propaganda, which is what THEY use.
It's probably a good thing that the viewing public puts satire up on a pedestal. We've been fortunate to have people like Stephen Colbert in our lives for long enough to demonstrate that mockery can be sharp, and that thought-provoking comedy can appeal to the masses. But satire comes in all shapes and sizes–The Interview isn't the kind of movie you'd expect to change the world, based strictly on its style. And that's kind of the point. A movie this silly should not have caused an international incident, and the fact that it DID is evidence of how powerful even the most seemingly-innocuous media can be in this plugged-in world. North Korea has internet access, which means that it's very possible that “The Interview” would reach the people in that country. It's unlikely that the movie would spark a revolution, but featuring their Supreme Leader in such a realistically-unflattering light is dangerous to the REAL Kim Jong Un's ultimate authority.
I was expecting to have amusing stories to share about the experience of watching “The Interview” in a sold-out theater on Christmas Day, but it was actually quite uneventful. It didn't feel like we were participating in anything meaningful or important. Quite honestly, it was very much like any other major movie opening night, except for the fact that it was the biggest crowd I've ever seen in a screening room at Treehouse Cinema (or any other name that theater has gone by in the last 20 years). I had anticipated people excitedly talking about the movie itself before it got started, but that didn't turn out to be the case. One guy near me mentioned to his friend that “The Interview's” ensuing calamity will probably be examined in future mass media textbooks, but other than that, all the conversations I overheard were of the natural, everyday variety, which I suppose is the biggest jab at any overly sensitive dictators: we came out in force to revel in mockery, and we did it with indifference. During the movie, the laughs were hearty and genuine, and any thoughts about international controversy were eclipsed by what was happening onscreen.
And, as I predicted, nobody was killed by North Korean secret agents.
Bottom line, “The Interview” isn't for everyone. It's middle-brow at best and not all the jokes hit the mark quite right. With that said, it is very funny in parts, with a relevant subject matter. It's tightly paced, over the top, and never boring. It may not make any top-ten lists, but you've probably never seen another movie quite like this one.