Movie Review: The Interview

I felt it was my patriotic duty to watch The Interview and stick it to the dictatorial bastards who run North Korea. With that in mind, I really wanted to like the movie. On the flip side, I heard mostly negative reviews about the movie so my expectations were lowered.

To start with, the movie has an absolutely brilliant high concept: The host and producer of a cheesy celebrity interview show are recruited by the CIA to assassinate the dictator of North Korea, who happens to be a huge fan of the show. Also in its favor was Seth Rogan and James Franco, whose movies I’m a big fan of. With all of this going for it, how can it possibly go wrong? After watching the movie, I couldn’t really understand why Kim Jong Un was so upset about the movie. The movie was silly and goofy and hard to take serious. Rogan and Franco played it for laughs and often achieved it. They made fun of the United States and their policies as much or more than North Korea. The North Korean reaction to the movie pretty much proved the point that they were trying to make—this is an amateurish joke of a regime with a lunatic clown in charge of it.

I had quite a few chuckles during the course of the movie. This wasn’t the greatest comedy I’ve ever watched, certainly not as good as the last time Rogan and Franco collaborated in This is the End, which may have been the funniest movie I’ve ever watched. But the movie is well worth watching. As for Kim Jong Un—chill out, grab a bucket of popcorn, and watch the movie. You might get a couple of laughs.