There were plenty of raised eyebrows and maybe even some sniggering late last year when hackers broke into Sony's computer system and leaked numerous yet to be released movies and some pretty sensitive e-mails. The real thoughts of corporate paymasters about `the talent' made very interesting reading.
But the story surrounding The Interview soon turned very sinister indeed when terrorists, putatively originating from North Korea itself, threatened attacks on cinemas screening the movie.
Seth Rogen might make a film about that one day and his latest hook-up with James Franco won’t make you feel any freer or high-minded after watching it but you may have a few snort-out loud moments. Nobody was expecting Duck Soup or The Great Dictator, right?
James Franco plays Dave Skylark, an outgrown man child who hosts his own tabloid chat show, a format that has long become resistant to parody. Dave is an unhinged live wire and Franco, himself given to making his own entertainingly off the wall statements, is excellent in the role.
His foil and fall guy is his producer Aaron Rapaport, who is played with a mixture of glumness and equally child-like idiocy by Seth Rogen. When he becomes beset by a crisis of conscience about the celeb schlock he’s peddling, Aaron feels the call of more high-minded 60 Minutes style journalism, much to Dave’s annoyance.
When it emerges that North Korea’s “supreme leader” Kim Jong un (who, in reality, is rumoured to keep a huge library of dumb US movies just like this one) is a huge fan of Skylark's show, salvation is at hand. Dave will grill the despot live on air in what he avers will be the “biggest interview since Frosty-Nixon”.
Enter the CIA, who recruit the pair to assassinate Jong un and destabilise his nuke-ready rogue state. Clearly, Aaron and Dave are the wrong mans for the job and there is much fun to be had with their incompetence and Jong un’s own very real conflict between his hatred for the US and his love for US trash culture.
Sure enough, The Interview soon descends into a quagmire of cartoon violence and gross out humour, and while it isn't a patch on Team America, it does recall South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in its sheer silliness.
However, Rogen and Goldberg can't resist a cop out, wish fulfilment ending about American moral and military superiority. Dennis Rodman doesn't make an appearance but I thought The Interview was a hoot.
Alan Corr
