Veronica Pahomova cartoonist
For weeks, “The Interview” reoccuringly made headlines everywhere, informing the nation that North Korea was against the release, and considered it both humiliating and an act of terrorism. A movie directly targeting a country that doesn’t like America is already something to talk about, and the genuine threats only added to the fuss. But compared to the set expectations, this film seemed to be more of a disappointment to the U.S. than to worshipers of the infamous dictator himself.
Talk-show host of “Skylark Tonight”, Dave Skylark (James Franco) seeks the ultimate interview that will make him even more famous than he already is, while his best friend and producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) yearns for the story that would actually make a difference in the world. Two co-workers with two different opinions, what could go wrong?
After learning that notorious North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was a fan of their American gossip show, a plan was devised to allow three dreams to be met: Skylark’s, Rapaport’s and the CIA’s, who desperately want to rid the world of Un. Sent on a flight to North Korea to get the most unlikely interview ever, the two best friends take on a mission to assassinate North Korea’s personal Jesus.
Let’s face it, people will always be lured in by the idea of controversy. But honestly, the hype that the media and Sony molded proved to be all talk and no walk. If viewers knew how unsatisfyingly “okay” “The Interview” truly was going to be, it wouldn’t have already grossed about $30 million dollars. By the time the credits were rolling, the film left the audience slouched and thinking, “Wow, that was, eh.”
“For all the controversy, in the end, the funniest thing about ‘The Interview’may be people’s ‘Is that what the fuss was about?’ response to the finished product,” Kofi Outlaw said in his article for Screen Rant.
Maybe if they knew how much media attention their film would get, directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg would have spent more well-needed time on the overall comedic aspect, instead of incorporating a bunch of random styles and jokes as if they made a list and blindly threw a dart to determine what they should add in the next scene.
Or, honestly, it probably wouldn’t have even mattered in the first place. With the media attention the movie did and was expected to get, a portion of the film could’ve been a blank screen and millions would still pay to see what the fuss was about.
But that’s what made “The Interview” an even bigger bummer than it already was. The fact that it was thought to be so funny and so offensive that North Korea named it an “act of terrorism” gave this film expectations so high that they were almost unreachable.
With the famous inseparable duo, Seth Rogen and James Franco, casted as the leading roles, one can easily expect great things filled with satirical humor. However, as it progressed, the plot became more predictable, following the usual “best friend betrays the other and falls for someone else, but then realizes the other was right all along” scenario, and the humorously intended lines ended with more silence.
Sex joke, after sex joke, after drug joke, after sex joke. Throughout the movie, it seemed liked the cast was playing a really bad game of volleyball, each attempting to bump a joke, but never fully making it over the net to squeeze a hint of laughter.
And then, suddenly, toward the end, this political fantasy took a hard left into a cringe worthy, grotesque, gory type of humor as viewers watched more appendages being bitten off than they’d ever expect in a duration of only five minutes.
It’s almost difficult to comprehend the fact that this dismal movie, which attempts to portray Kim Jong Un as a secret lover of Katy Perry and fruity margaritas, was close to starting a full fledged war and terrorist actions in movie theaters.
The buzz this movie somehow attained can be compared to the beautiful fabricated North Korea that Kim Jong Un tried to sell to the media, but “The Interview” managed to be one of the very same fake styrofoam fruit lying in the cardboard grocery store that ended up disappointing Skylark.