The Interview

"The Interview"

"As Reported by Dollyforme"

Boy, it does not get any more strange than this move – let’s kill a dictator! It does work however and the movie is very funny.

Sensationally popular tabloid TV talk-show host Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his "I wanna be taken seriously" producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) head to North Korea for a rendezvous with leader Kim Jong-un (Randall Park), who has agreed to be interviewed for ther show.

Their secret mission, courtesy of CIA bombshell Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) is to assassinate him and make it out safely before anyone notices.
Driven by the blustery, swear-happy, cadence-free performances that characterise most Seth Rogen comedies, this reasonably funny lark at least has the distinction of mixing in some light political satire with the usual knockabout fare we've come to expect.

As is the case with almost all American comedies for the past 15-20 years, it's at least 15-20 minutes too long, thanks mainly to the "bonding" between Skylark and Kim, and to all the mandatory, meandering improv. The day will hopefully come soon when these comedians actually nut their bits out first before the cameras roll.

Everyone knows by now the huge controversy kicked up by the touchy North Korean dictatorship when they got wind of the film, and how they made threats, cyber-attacked Sony and so forth.

All the film says politically is that the common folk of North Korea are decent, hard-working people who deserve better than what they've got.
In terms of Kim's reaction, he really missed a big opportunity. If he was half the media manipulator he is portrayed as being in the film, what he should have done was invite the film to have its glittering world premiere in Pyongyang, then at the speeches afterwards do a fun 20-minute routine roasting America. That would have warmed him to the West in no time.

We see some major character changes as Skylark decides to be a real journalist, then he and Aaron become soldiers and heroes, leading to three or four fingers being bitten off, lots of blood, lots of fighting, gun battles and a full scale battle with armored vehicles, helicopters and nuclear-tipped missiles. It's all quite silly and enjoyable, except for the graphic violence in the film. Do we really need to see men being crushed to death under a tank, and blood spraying all over people at a dinner party -- all those fingers being bitten off?

I didn't laugh at all blood and gore – just most of it actually! I also did laugh at some of the running jokes about junk news shows about celebrities. That kind of stuff is close to the truth. It is hard to make fun of junk news because it is even sillier than the junk news in this movie. It is funny to think that junk news guys could become real heroes and save the world. It would never happen, and that's the joke, at least one of them.

One has to address the elephant in the room; the very men who coined the phrase “The Simpsons’ did it,” Southpark‘s Trey Parker and Matt Stone have not only done the Korean dictator movie with a barrage of dick jokes but they did it BETTER. Team America: World Police is a scathing satire of U.S foreign policy, and a neutering of the (arguably worse) Kim Jong-il; with the added ridiculousness and genius of PUPPETS!
Of course North Korea continues to commit heinous crimes against their own populace, practice facist propaganda and threaten to extinguish the U.S from the earth every second week. It’s ripe content for Dan Sterling (screenplay/story), Seth Rogen (story) and Evan Goldberg (story) however the efforts of these three gents, feels much like Rapaport’s own pursuit for journalistic integrity. They’ve been responsible for some great escapist, hilarious, ‘bromance’ comedies and they’re trying to up the stakes. When the task becomes too daunting, they shift gears into movie references, detailed descriptions of post-sex ‘dick stink’ and singing along to Katy Perry.

Overall, the movie was a surprise for me, funnier than I thought it would be and well worth a buck at redbox.