Here's our review of The Interview anyway

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      Starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. Rating unavailable. Not playing anywhere!

      Curious about the film that could have gotten you killed, might have brought down Sony Pictures, and almost certainly made things uncomfortable between North Korea and Dennis Rodman?

      The truth is that The Interview is too monumentally stupid for even the pettiest of dictatorships to really care about it, although you might feel differently if you were gay, Asian, or a film lover. One wonders if the Guardians of Peace—whether they're a North Korea-sponsored operation or not—actually saw The Interview once they cyber-douched the studio that was reckless enough to greenlight this thing. 

      By now, the plot should be familiar to anyone with a set of eyes and a Twitter account. After getting Eminem to admit that he's gay on camera (one of the film's funniest scenes), moronic and sexually confused TV host Dave Skylark (James Franco) finds his stock rising just enough to score an interview with one of his biggest fans: Kim Jong-un (Randall Park). This is a-okay with his longtime producer, Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen), who's groping for something a little more substantial, career-wise, than another 12 years of Skylarking around in the TMZ ghetto.

      Unfortunately for him, and despite what appears to be an entirely heterosexual love affair between the two men, Skylark is already operating well above his intellectual capacity with guests like Rob Lowe (who also makes a WTF cameo). Says the puppyish TV star about his crack at the North Korean despot: "This could be the most important interview since frosty Nixon!"    

      Franco's agent might be quietly thanking whatever Sumerian demon he prays to that the Guardians got to Sony before the rest of us did. The ubiquitous actor's flamboyantly straight Skylark is an insane creation and the logical endpoint, short of "ironic anal", to his and Rogen's ongoing turbo-bromance. It was genuinely funny in This Is the End, the previous film from the directing duo of Rogen and Evan Goldberg, but here it's just worrying. Is The Interview lampooning homosexual panic or expressing it? Is this artsy or fartsy? I honestly can't tell, but it's amazing how much material gets squeezed out of the scene where Rogen has to conceal a drone up his ass.      

      Oh, right: drones. In the film's one concession to reality, the CIA recruits these two closeted bozos to assassinate the nuke-wielding supreme leader. Too bad he turns out to be such a rad and very possibly not gay dude, which causes all sorts of problems for poor old Aaron, who's busy trying to nail the hot if oddly coiffeured propaganda minister, Sook (Vancouver comedian Diana Bang). The question of whether Kim Jong-un poops or not is significant—he's concealing the entire plot up his ass!—as is Skylark's blooming affection for his number one fan.

      This is clearly anything but satire. Instead, The Interview revels in ignorance and brandishes its tastelessness like a divine right. It doesn't so much push your buttons as mash the entire pad, so I'm leaning pretty hard towards the theory that Rogen and his talented cohorts are super-indulged brats with fuck all to say rather than the kind of people who should be making jokes about starvation. But I laughed plenty enough—it's hard not to when Rogen is crying "owee, owee, owee" after getting his finger bitten off. And it's also hard not to laugh when you consider that the Guardians of Peace inadvertantly chased the biggest bomb right out of the theatre. 

      Comments

      18 Comments

      Meatballs

      Dec 17, 2014 at 8:59pm

      Yes yes but please tell us how did the scene with Kim Un's exploding head turned out.

      Let's just nuke north korea..

      Dec 18, 2014 at 11:04am

      And get on with it already...

      Snob

      Dec 18, 2014 at 11:45am

      That last line is gold, Mack.

      Maybe...

      Dec 18, 2014 at 1:02pm

      Based on this review maybe it is Rogen and Franco who are behind the threats in an effort to keep the film out of theatres themselves.

      Hermie

      Dec 18, 2014 at 2:01pm

      Regardless of how bad it may have been, we should never bow down to terrorist threats. Shame on Sony!

      Heathstrom

      Dec 18, 2014 at 4:24pm

      Awesome!

      Compared to this pathetic toilet-humor POS movie, this whole news story is pure comedy gold!

      shoegazer

      Dec 18, 2014 at 8:17pm

      @Hermie...How's denistry coming these days? Any Bumbles with bad bicuspids? Hope you find some solace with the mis-fit toys this holiday season.

      Hazlit

      Dec 18, 2014 at 8:35pm

      That picture is offensive. Can you please remove it.

      Alan

      Dec 18, 2014 at 10:52pm

      While I loathe communism and the regime of North Korea, it just goes to show that a people dedicated to resisting the forces of globalism can score victories.

      I give two thumbs up to North Korea for pulling this off, if only to show that the huge beast of the media is not as invulnerable as many would like us to think.

      RUK

      Dec 19, 2014 at 8:45am

      @Alan

      Talk about faint praise. Sure, "North Korea" is resisting General Motors, Disney and McDonald's, if you equate one country with the Kim crime family. By your logic, "Canada" is buying F35s, muzzling federal government scientists, and hiding in a closet during a shooting.

      Do any North Koreans want to resist the forces of globalism? Gee, let's ask them. Oh wait, we can't, it's a FUCKING TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP