When Seth Rogen’s new geopolitical comedy The Interview was nearing its theatrical release in America, the
distributors Sony made international news by seemingly bowing to supposed
threats made from North Korea and pulled the movie. This drastic reaction was widely derided and
quickly reversed with a limited run in cinemas on Christmas Day followed by a
bigger release and VoD campaign, which in turn garnered enormous global
attention from the news media. Cynics amongst
us might conclude that this was just an enormous PR stunt in one of the most
postmodern film release strategies ever conceived, or you might agree that the
provocative narrative really was worthy of international tensions and threats
of violence…
Dave Skylark (James Franco) is a
narcissistic, vain and imbecilic TV talk show host who has a talent for
interviewing a-list celebrities and making them reveal their secrets and hidden
talents. His hit show is kept together
by his producer and best friend Aaron Rapaport (Rogen), who dreams of doing
something less trivial and more important with the show and the wide audience
that it is has developed. After an
interview with Rob Lowe (about baldness) gets cut short due to a interrupting
news update about tensions with North Korea, Skylark discovers that Kim Jong-Un
is a fan of his and so tries to appease Rapaport by securing an interview with
the dictator. Much to their amazement,
the supreme leader agrees so they celebrate by getting wrecked on super-strength
ecstasy.
The next morning they get a visit from
the CIA who have a proposition for them to ‘take out’ Kin Jong-Un using a
special poison, but when they arrive in Pyongyang Skylark begins to recognize
himself in the lonely dictator and starts to doubt the mission…
If a comedy film is going to threaten
the very existence of the Western World, then at the very least then it should
be acutely funny or satirical – yet The
Interview seems to take a much more subversive stance by mostly hiding the
more intelligent political humour in amongst minutes and minutes of
scatological and masturbatory jokes. It
makes the controversy surrounding the film all the more ridiculous once the
silliness of the dialogue/plot reveals itself.
Saying that though, there are some undeniably laugh-out-loud moments,
almost all from James Franco – one of Hollywood’s most chameleonic younger
A-lister.
The film will obviously be compared to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America:
World Police – a far funnier and braver satire on American hard power and
North Korea – yet, although The Interview
does briefly reference some poignant facts about American incarceration levels
and tabloid ‘journalism’, the film is closer in aesthetic and tone with Rogen’s
other comedies such as This Is The End and
Superbad. It also fits into the recent run of Bromance
comedies that thrive on depicting libidinous and drug-fuelled masculine men
that privately profess their platonic love for each other…
Regardless of content, the film
definitely benefits from the happenstance of capturing the ‘free speech’
zeitgeist. At one point the surprisingly
affable and sensitive Supreme Leader states to Skylark, “You know what’s more
destructive than a nuclear bomb…? Words”,
which although delivered as a punchline, is actually a (somewhat) profound
suggestion of how best to deal with geopolitical tensions: ridicule really is
one of the best ways to combat absurdly straight-faced tyrants and
despots. It seems fitting that shortly
after the furore surrounding the potential censorship of the film, a much more
important debate around free speech and satire arose in France after the
shootings of cartoonists in the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, who replied
by making even more jokes that defrocked the obscene ideology of their enemies.
It would obviously be crass to in any
way align the minor exhibition inconvenience/luck that The Interview was subjected to and the tragedy that occurred in
Paris, yet in a strange way the two incidents are somewhat linked. The only people who are going to get
ideologically upset by the film are the people who haven’t seen it. You might not appreciate the relentless dick
jokes, but after viewing the film it would be utterly ridiculous to be actually
upset by the politics…
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