The Interview REVIEW #2

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So there's this Seth Rogen James Franco comedy called The Interview that caused a ridiculous amount of hoopla last year. It all started when Sony Pictures was targeted in a hack that stole basically all of their information from confidential emails between executives, employee personal information, budgets of different films, silly cat photos, etc. This information began leaking onto the internet for weeks with no stop in sight... unless a certain film, which was suspected to be The Interview, was pulled from its Christmas release date. Things began to escalate when Sony employees were threatened by the hackers, only know as The GOP,  or Guardians of the Peace (Not the Republican GOP). Then it really started to get out of hand right before Christmas when a "9/11" style threat was put upon any theater showing the film. Major theater chains like Regal and AMC backed out of showing the film and ultimately Sony announced that it was scrapping the release. A huge outcry from Hollywood and people alike thought this was a terrible idea to back down from the hacking threat so then Sony was like "JK LOL" and announced that it would release the film onto Video on Demand and into small independent theaters all across the country. Which now leads to the big question. With all this pandemonium surrounding the comedy, is it actually any good?

(WARNING: This film has an adorable puppy named Digby)
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For anyone who has been Tom Hanks Castawaying on a deserted island or been using a shitty internet provider like comcast for the past few months, The Interview is about a big time talk show host (Franco) and his executive producer/best friend (Rogen) being asked by the CIA to assassinate the president of North Korea, Kim Jong-un under the guise of an exclusive interview. So yeah you can see why that might cause some controversy.

Turns out a lot of people ending up streaming the movie
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I came into this movie expecting it to be a comedic misfire of overplayed jokes and maybe having handful of funny parts tops. Something that wasn't special and just meh. Almost like with what happened earlier this year with the big disappointment in A Million Ways to Die in the West. Mainly because quite a few of the early press reviews were pointing in that direction.

 I was wrong. I found it to be hysterical!

"Been spending most our lives living in a dictators paradise!"
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The film is absurdly funny and crass! There's ridiculous death scenes, a large amount of Lord of the Rings references between Franco and Rogen, and there's a lot of honey dicking #FakeBromancing. Plus seeing those two try to be master spies is exactly how you would imagine. What also made it great was the portrayal of the North Korean dictator. In it, Kim Jong-Un (Randall Park) isn't just some bad guy who we can't wait for to die. He's actually just a dude who's got some really messed up daddy issues... and also happens to be a dictator of an infamous rouge country. The Jong-Un/Franco bro down chemistry was great and gave the movie the perfect conflict of Franco having second thoughts about killing his new friend after a fun filled afternoon of tank joy riding, tequila, and Katy Perry. Overall if you are a fan of some of Rogen and Franco's comedies, especially This is the End, then you will definitely enjoy this film. I give it 4 tigers with night vision goggles out of 5.