Suck It, North Korea

Last night, I saw the movie that the GOP (the so-called "Guardians of Peace," not the Republican Party) doesn't want you to see, The Interview. My motivation wasn't out of any jingoistic support of free speech or patriotism, but I won't lie: the fact that it has become controversial probably did make me want to see it more. That said, I tried not to raise my expectations above where they were when I first heard of the film in a "more innocent time" (a few months ago). If it was about as funny as Pineapple Express (likely, the humor would be as stupid), that would be good enough for me.

I was pleasantly surprised to find it surpassed those modest expectations. Though not as subversive or smartly satirical as the other movie it has now been lumped in with, Team America: World Police, The Interview does serve up plenty of laughs. Some of them, particularly a late-film honoring of the comedic "rule of three," are quite hysterical. There are several amusing cameos, many inherently funny scene set-ups, and the best use of an animal for laughs in quite sometime. (Not the animal near the middle of the movie; wait until the third act.)

But really, it's not the writing that gets the biggest laughs in The Interview. It's the performances that put it over the top. For that not insignificant number of people who hate on James Franco and Seth Rogen, that's going to be a hard sell. (But seriously, they weren't going to see the movie anyway.) Franco is perfect as blowhard talk show host Dave Skylark (intentionally named after his real-life brother?). To whatever degree this movie is actually attempting social commentary, it's in how stone dumb Skylark is, and by implication, muck-raking TV "journalists" of his ilk. The movie pokes just as much fun at this character as Kim Jong-un, and Franco makes it consistently funny. Meanwhile, Rogen gets more of the physical comedy (thankfully none of which hinges on his weight), and gets his share of the laughs too.

Timothy Simons has a small supporting role, bringing the brand of obnoxious he excels at on the HBO series Veep. Lizzy Caplan, now a star of Showtime's Masters of Sex, has to play it straight as a CIA agent, but seems to be having fun doing it. Randall Park ends up with the unenviable task of playing Kim Jong-un, delivering a sufficiently ridiculous caricature to carry the movie across the finish line in its final act.

The movie is so silly and comes across innocuously that it's easy to see how it got greenlighted, filmed, and scheduled all before anyone realized it might be a potential target for North Korean rage. To have anticipated a reaction like this, you would have had to anticipate, say, anger from the religious right over This Is the End. (Though perhaps it's odd that there wasn't?) The Interview simply isn't anything that different from what Franco and Rogen have been making for years and years.

But I did find it pretty funny. I give it a B+.