By Erik Luchsinger
By now everyone is familiar with the cyberterror fiasco/brilliant marketing scheme surrounding the latest James Franco and Seth Rogen buddy comedy, The Interview. Whether or not it was actually the North Koreans who hacked Sony, it was dubious if the movie would come out. Despite the sheer number of testicle-less movie studios and theatre companies, The Interview still came out on Youtube on Christmas day, and you better bet that we here at the ManChild Movie Blog jumped on the opportunity to see it.
As I ponied up the $5.99 to rent the movie on Youtube for the day I was about 70% sure I was wasting my money on another expendable buddy comedy. I really do like Rogen and Franco, with Pineapple Express and Superbad (fuck you it still counts) near the top of my list of favorite comedy movies. I was fearful of spending 2 hours watching them phone in a terrible movie.
Luckily, that was hardly the case. The Interview had some legitimately funny jokes, as well as the kind of ridiculous situations you would expect from a Rogen and Franco movie. The scenes where Dave Skylark (Franco) is hanging out with Kim (Randall Park) are the very hallmark of Franco's brand of humor. There's tanks, basketball, hot asian ladies with big ol' titties, copious drugs, and serious talk about approval by peers and parents. This is all set to everyone's favorite Katy Perry songs, just to top it all off. Not only is the whole sequence pretty funny, but it really gives the relationships between Skylark and Kim Jong Un quite a bit of depth. Considering how important that is to the story, I'm really glad that they decided to spend some time on it.
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The time invested in their relationship pays off too, and not just in laughs. The actual interview scene is pretty tense in addition to being sprinkled with funnies. There is a betrayal between Kim and Skylark once Skylark finally gets that Kim has been hiding all of the bad things going on in North Korea from him. If they hadn't spent so long broing out over Katy Perry and margaritas together it would have felt totally phony, but instead you kind of feel for Skylark despite all of his arrogant stupidity. It also makes Kim more thoroughly hate-able, as he almost seems human while chilling with Skylark.
There is no lack of sex and genital gags in The Interview, ranging from the "hide it in your butt" joke from the trailer to Skylark yelling loudly about his "stink dick" with the CIA at the door. My favorite of them was during a prep scene, where Rapoport (Rogen) and Sook (Diana Bang) are arming themselves for action. They reveal some large machine guns, grenades, etc. then, in the same way, Sook takes off her shirt and Rapoport pops his dick out, and then they're fucking. While it's just a sex joke (literally, Sook and Rapoport have sex), it's revealed in such a way that I thought it was really funny.
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While the plot is predictable in a lot of ways, it's not the kind of schlock that an equivalent movie by Adam Sandler would be. Instead of just flying off to North Korea, Rapoport has to go meet Kim's ambassadors in China first, which proves to be a complete waste of time for him. In Korea, our protagonists constantly lose their poison strips and lose sight of the goal, with Skylark decided to abandon it entirely at one point. When they do decide to go through with the plan they have to do things differently, which results in an intelligently crafted plan to discredit Kim on national television instead of just killing him, thus empowering the Korean people to revolt. Honestly, I was expecting the Sandler approach to the whole thing: some lowbrow asian penis jokes, Rob Schneider telling Skylark that "he can do it, kill Kim Jong Un!" and then Kim dying due to pooping his pants. Instead there is a plot that moves with jokes. Almost like a real movie, but a comedic one!
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The Interview was not the best Franco/Rogen movie ever, nor the best buddy comedy. It was good but not great. The reason I spent most of this review discussing the good points is because I was quite surprised that it didn't totally suck ass. I was worried my favorite stoner duo had lost their touch entirely. That is not the case, as The Interview is quite watchable, even if it's not quite worthy of all the hoopla surrounding it. I kinda feel like North Korea should have been OK with it, as it humanizes Kim in a way that's basically impossible to do in real life. It'll make you laugh, it might make you cry (if you break your leg somehow while watching it), but it's not an Oscar-worthy masterpiece by any means. I give it 3/5.
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