The Interview

Evan Goldberg’s and Seth Rogen’s The Interview is what it is, and it’s academic to point out all that it isn’t — mainly because the co-directors didn’t intend for it to be anything other than what it is: a spectacular, vulgar bromantic mess. So why bother wishing and wondering? It is NOT art even though we know that at least one of the film’s leading men, James Franco, is capable of much more than mugging and hamming. It seems to carry a message about truth, honor and trust, but it’s not peddling philosophy. In fact, it’s pretty lunkheaded, and unapologetically crass, which is Rogen’s (highly bankable) hallmark. Yet, alas, it’s frequently quite funny. Randall Park is a toothy riot as Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un, an eternal adolescent with daddy-issues, who pits wits and dentia against Franco’s vain celebrity reporter who is commissioned by the CIA to poison the pesky dictator during a globally televised interview. Rogen plays the producer of Franco’s popular program. Goldberg and Rogen (who worked together on Neighbors, This is the End,and Pineapple Express in various capacities) make movies that are National Lampoon without the restraint and razor sharp satire. Instead, Goldberg and Rogen offer a no-limits buffet of low-culture references and sendups that seem to have more in common with vaudeville than with motion pictures.