The Interview - Freedom Doesn't Mean Smart

Freedom isn't free.  Sometimes you have to watch a really stupid broad comedy, all to save our freedom to have incredibly dumb movies.  North Korea can weep, I've seen their god king shit his pants.

If the controversy surrounding "The Interview" was actually an elaborate gonzo marketing scheme, it would be one of the greatest and most successful plans of all time.  What would have been a mediocre release destined to be buried at Christmas has instead become the movie of the moment, overwhelming all the Oscarbait, musicals, and action epics of late December.  This was a huge satire of international politics and the ridiculousness of the North Korean regime.  I'm not talking about the movie, it has about all the depth of a usual bawdy bro comedy, I'm talking about real life.  As it turns out, that is infinitely more absurd.  Suddenly a movie where Seth Rogan shoves a bomb up his ass has become a major patriotic symbol of the greatness of Americanism against tyranny.  What a world.

Actually reviewing "The Interview" now seems trite.  The film itself is far inferior to the controversy around him.  I did not want to review "The Interview" because the trailers essentially tell the story already.  You know what you're getting, what exactly can I say that will do anything?  Seth Rogan and James Franco run a crappy celebrity entertainment talk show, and in a bid to appear like real journalists, travel to North Korea to interview Kim Jong-Un, the most dangerous dictator on the planet.  Lizzy Caplan, a CIA agent, recruits them to murder Kim, for some reason overlooking that James Franco's character, Dave Skylark is a dangerous idiot, and Seth Rogan is hardly better.  Hyjinks ensue, parties are had, James Franco's badly overplayed Skylark winds up befriending Kim (who ironically is the most captivating character in the movie despite his real-life counterpart's attempts to stop "The Interview" from being seen.  Then it all ends in a huge explosion of action.  It's mediocre:  loud and annoying, but manages a few laughs.  If you tolerated "This is the End", you can tolerate this.

The stupidity of US garbage pop culture has become a triumph of good against evil - both in real life and in film.  Hopefully the next time a supervillain wants to bully the world's film appetite it can be for a film that is more meaningful.